Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

Milk and Dairy Produce (Prices)

Miss Lestor: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what factors tending towards an increase in the price of milk have arisen from the recent discussion of the EEC Council of Ministers.

The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Joseph Godber): Detailed discussions of the Commission's proposals will take place in the Council of Ministers next week. The Commission has explained that its proposals aim, on the one hand, to ensure a labour income on the modern farm enterprise comparable with incomes outside agriculture and, on the other hand, to take account of the supply-demand situation in the milk sector.

Miss Lestor: In view of the unique situation that we face, is it not a fact that the factors to which I have referred will no longer apply, bearing in mind the Labour Party's pledge to renegotiate EEC policy, and that we have no intention of allowing milk prices to increase to the consumer?

Mr. Godber: We are interested to hear the hon. Lady's aspirations, but I fear that it will be some time before she can carry them into effect. However, such a statement is always a matter of interest to the House.

Mr. Swain: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he gave a categorical

assurance to Staffordshire farmers at their annual meeting on milk prices? Will the price review be announced during the General Election campaign as a political propaganda exercise, or will it be held over so that he can report to this House—or my right hon. Friend will be able to report—before the announcement is made?

Mr. Godber: I am glad to hear the hon. Gentleman's first comment but I cannot say the same for his correction. I shall be happy to report to this House after the election. However, it would be unfair to the farming community to ask it to wait until the election is over. I shall hope to be in a position to announce the price review results in the fairly near future.

Mr. Charles Morrison: Apart from the announcement which my right hon. Friend may be able to make about the price review, which we trust will be generous, in view of the continuing uncertainty about agricultural costs which could affect the whole industry, will he also undertake in the months ahead, to keep a continuing watch on the position in relation to costs, as the price review may affect them. If he feels that any action is necessary will he take it speedily?

Mr. Godber: My hon. Friend raises an important point. It is essential that this country should continue to expand agricultural production. It is essential for the health of the country as much as for the farming community. I shall certainly wish to have very much in mind the points raised by my hon. Friend.

Mr. Buchan: The Minister is telling us that he is concerned with expansion. Why will he not then admit the seriousness of the crisis now facing the dairy industry? Will he confirm that we are liable to have a milk shortage, followed by rationing, by the end of the year? Is that the reason for the election—because he does not want to admit that position to the British people? Is he trying to have the Annual Price Review issued at a period when we cannot question him, and when the British consumer will not find out that the cost of between £500 million and £600 million will come out of his pocket to pay for the ridiculous agricultural policy?

Mr. Godber: That is a strange question, with little relation to reality. I interpret from that remark that the hon. Member does not wish me to announce the results as soon as possible. It is essential for the farmers that the results should be announced as early as possible. It is my intention so to do. I hope that I shall have the full support of the hon. Member in anything that I do in that review to seek to help the farming community.

Mr. Lamond: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food by what percentages the prices of eggs, milk, butter and cheese increased between June 1970 and the latest available date.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mrs. Peggy Fenner): As the answer contains a number of figures I will, with permission, circulate the information in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Lamond: Does the hon. Lady realise that we are not surprised that she is coy about revealing these figures? I am satisfied that the housewives will see clearly from the review the catastrophic record of the Government over their whole period of office. I say to the Prime Minister that if he wants to——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The time for saying things is a little later. It is time for Questions now.

Mr. Lamond: May I ask the hon. Lady, Mr. Speaker, to convey to the Prime Minister the request that he should fight the election on the question of prices and not try to drag in any red herrings, like the industrial dispute, for his own ends?

Mrs. Fenner: I should hate the hon. Gentleman to feel that I am coy about anything. If he wants to know the figures, I can tell him that the price of eggs has gone up by between 114 per cent. and 161 per cent., the price of milk by around 19 per cent., the price of butter by between 21 per cent. and 26 per cent. and the price of cheese by 79 per cent. If the hon. Member knows anything at all, to judge by his estimation of what the election issue will be he must know that

almost the whole of the Western world has had similar rises in the prices of its products.

Mr. Ewing: During the forthcoming election, will the hon. Lady accept a personal invitation from me to come to Stirling, Falkirk and Grangemouth and give the same figures and seek to defend them?

Mrs. Fenner: I do not think that I shall have time to do that.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: The hon. Lady has once again suggested that world food prices are wholly responsible. May I remind her that last year, when egg prices rose by 50 per cent., the profits of one of the largest egg producers in this country—Eastwood's—went up by 180 per cent.? Why do not this Government—I am glad they will not be coming back after three weeks—bring retail prices and fresh food prices within the scope of the Price Commission?

Mrs. Fenner: The main reason for the rise in egg prices, as the hon. Lady will know, is, first, that the return to the producers was so low that many of them went out of production altogether. She will also be aware, as hon. Members who have made pleas for the farmer clearly are, that the cost of their feed stuffs has doubled. In relation to the firm to which the hon. Lady referred, and its profit, the Price Commission looks over the whole range of profit of any one firm and gives consent only if, in the area in which it is seeking an application, that price is a proper one in the light of allowable costs.

Mr. Woodnutt: Will my hon. Friend remind our right hon. Friend that in view of what she has said—that the price of milk has risen by only 19 per cent. but the price of feeding stuffs has more than doubled over the past year—a substantial increase in the price of milk will have to be given to the farmers in order to keep them in business?

Mrs. Fenner: My hon. Friend will know that all these matters form part of the annual review. There is also a later Question on that subject.

Following is the information:
The following table shows the percentage increase in average retail prices between 16 June 1970 and 11 December 1973, the latest date for which information is available:—

Item
Percentage increase in average price


Eggs, per dozen


Large
114·5


Standard
140·4


Medium
161·0


Milk, ordinary, per pint
19·6


Butler, per lb.


New Zealand
26·2


Danish
21·5


Cheese, cheddar type, per lb.
79·2

Source: Department of Employment.

Beef

Mr. Orme: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether intervention buying of beef for storage is now proposed in the EEC countries.

The Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Anthony Stodart): It has been possible to offer beef for sale to intervention agencies in the EEC since July last year.

Mr. Orme: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this hoarding of beef, which I understand the Government have already undertaken to do, has meant that old-age pensioners have had their consumption of beef reduced by 25 per cent. since 1970? That is outrageous. Why do not the Government release the beef that is available?

Mr. Stodart: Because intervention, as I have told the House several times, is an alternative method of supporting the market. If producers do not get a worthwhile price for producing beef, none will be produced.

Mr. John Wells: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there has been an overall increase, however small, in meat consumption in the past two years?

Mr. Stodart: I certainly take the opportunity of saying that the propaganda put out by the hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Buchan) is either foolish or determined to distort. I believe it to be the latter, because the consumption of meat is higher than it was at the date that he says.

Mr. Paget: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that at this moment calves that a

year ago were fetching £60 are being sent to kennels for the hounds, and that this is a wonderful example of how to pass from one shortage to another?

Mr. Stodart: The hon. and learned Member should not exaggerate the position.

Mr. Paget: It is true.

Mr. Moate: Will my right hon. Friend say whether intervention buying of beef in the United Kingdom has actually taken place?

Mr. Stodart: Yes, Sir—25 tons have been bought in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Shore: But do not the fact that we have already started intervention buying of beef and the fact that we have already had to introduce an 8 per cent. tax on imported New Zealand lamb since 1st January entirely blow the gaff on the Ministry's excuse that the increase in beef prices in Britain is due to world prices and not to the arrangements of the CAP? Will he undertake that in the last few weeks of this Government they will not enter into any further arrangements and agreements to increase food prices in Britain?

Mr. Stodart: I may knock the smile off the right hon. Gentleman's face by saying that despite what he says the price of lamb has fallen since the import duty was introduced.

Dairy Farmers

Mr. Biffen: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the maximum increase that can be paid to United Kingdom dairy producers in the current price review, having regard to the phased harmonisation arrangements and possible increase in the standard quality of milk permitted under the Treaty of Accession and the current proposals for milk and dairy products in the Common Market price review.

Mr. Godber: The operation of EEC Regulation No. 749/73 is being considered with the European Commission.

Mr. Biffen: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I much regret that such a straightforward and precise Question could not have had a more explicit answer? Will he please take into account the fact that the national dairy industry


is going through grave economic circumstances which require a national solution based upon the unique national circumstances of the high cost of imported feeding stuffs? Will he kindly draw that to the attention of his fellow Ministers in Brussels, irrespective of the requirements of Regulation No. 749/73?

Mr Godber: My hon. Friend may be assured that what my answer means precisely is that that is just what I am doing. That is why I cannot expand on it at present. I am acutely aware of this problem and am discussing it at this time. That is why I cannot make a fuller statement.

Mr. Pardoe: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the average price received by British dairy farmers for each gallon of milk produced in the last three months of 1970 and 1973; what was the percentage increase between these dates; and what estimate he has made of the average increase in the price paid by dairy farmers for dairy herd feed stuffs over the same period.

Mr. Gwynoro Jones: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what was the average price received by dairy farmers for each gallon of milk produced in the last quarters of 1970 and 1973, respectively.

Mr. Godber: Dairy farmers in England and Wales received, on average, 19·8 pence per gallon for milk produced in the last three months of 1970 and 24 pence per gallon for the same period in 1973—an increase of something over 21 per cent. In the corresponding period the average price of dairy compound feeding stuffs rose from £40·62 to £66·92 per ton.

Mr. Pardoe: Is the Minister aware that the figures which he has given are the reason for the total loss of confidence of dairy fanners throughout this country in the present Government's agricultural policies? What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman made of the bribe necessary to buy back the dairy farmers' vote, and will he guarantee that that bribe will be announced by the Government before 28th February?

Mr. Godber: I am not clear from the hon. Gentleman's question and the felicitous

way in which he put it whether he is seeking to prevent me from giving farmers a fair return. That would be an unfortunate interpretation, but that is what it sounded like. The hon. Gentleman must be fully aware that the sole reason why we have brought forward the price review, and the reason why we have said that we will bring it forward at an early stage and announce it as soon as possible, is that we know of the problems facing dairy farmers as a result of the explosion in world prices for cereals, and we intend to do something about it.

Mr. Winterton: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the total reliance that livestock and dairy farmers are putting on this year's price review? Will he assure the House that he will bear in mind the up-to-date costs before he announces the award? Will he also assure the House that the minimum increase on milk will be 6p a gallon?

Mr. Godber: I assure my hon. Friend that I have been studying the figures with great care. I shall announce the result as soon as possible, but I have not the slightest intention of engaging in an auction on this matter in the House.

Mr. Jones: Is the Minister aware that by doing absolutely nothing for the last nine months he has totally lost the confidence of dairy farmers? Does he not realise that in the last three months of 1973 milk production fell by 20 million gallons—a fall for the first time since 1964?

Mr. Godber: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should be so unaware of the normal practice in this matter. Over the last 20 years there has never been an occasion when an amendment has been made to a price review between the annual awards. This is the standard procedure It was only in the last three months of last year that the problem arose. In 1970 there was not a review award, there was a sum which my right hon. Friend gave to the industry to overcome the appalling condition in which the Labour Party had left farming when it left office. But this is dealing with those affairs which go from year to year according to market conditions and not according to political ignorance or prejudice, which was the cause of the 1970 collapse.

Mr. Boscawen: Is my right hon. Friend aware that if he restores profitability to the dairy industry, as I believe he will, it will be the best value for money that British housewives can possibly have?

Mr. Godber: Yes. In the atmosphere of today it is important for us to remember that dairy farmers are doing a very hard and difficult job, for seven days a week, and that it is the duty of the Government of the day—whatever Government—to see that they get a fair return.

Mr. Douglas: Will the Minister accept that the plight of the small dairy farmer is extremely grave at present because of his reliance on the cheque that he gets for his milk? Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to remedy immediately this difficulty between the price received and the price that farmers are paying. Will the Minister concede that whatever the figures are for the slaughtering of the dairy herd in England and Wales, and allowing for the fact that he is not directly responsible, slaughtering of the dairy herd in Scotland has increased in the last three or four months?

Mr. Godber: There is a lot of truth in what the hon. Member says. I do not deny that there is a difficult situation; that is why I have brought the review forward. I want to announce it as soon as possible. I am only sorry that some Labour Members may not be in the House to hear me announce it.

Mr. George Cunningham: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will appreciate when you hear my point of order why I could not delay it until later. I realise that you are doing your best to call supporters and opponents of the Government in a fair manner, as you normally do. Nevertheless, you are in a manifest difficulty of finding someone from the Government benches to support the Government on prices. Will you invite someone—[Interruption.]

Mr. William Hamilton: Let them put up their hands.

Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a very orderly intervention, even at an election meeting.

National Dairy Herd

Dr. John A. Cunningham: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and

Food what is his estimate of the rate of decline of the national dairy herd; and what effect this will have on future milk supplies.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: No figures are available which give any indication of such a decline.

Dr. Cunningham: It is clear that the whole dairy section of the agricultural industry knows that the national dairy herd is declining, first because of the cost of feed—[Hon. Members: "Question."]—and secondly because of the dairy-to-beef conversion. [Hon. Members: "Question."] Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that this will inevitably lead to milk rationing in this country next winter?

Mr. Stodart: May I, for the second week running, say that it is absolutely out of the question that there will be any shortage of liquid milk for consumption this year? It is total scare-mongering to say otherwise. As for the hon. Gentleman's first point, the latest figures that we have are from the census taken in September, which showed the dairy herd up 3 per cent. on last year. We do not have the December figures. If I had them, I should of course give them to the House. Cow slaughterings are certainly up on last year's, but last year's were very much lower than they had been the year before. It may well be that the dairy herd is now younger and more productive.

Mr. Tom King: Since my right hon. Friend recognises the serious situation that dairy producers face at this time, and since it is recognised that this has caused exceptional increases in feeding stuff costs, which have been extremely volatile, is my right hon. Friend seriously considering some variable scheme which might be included in the review, so that if there are further increases, as has been suggested, they can be accommodated, and if there are reductions they can be reflected as well?

Mr. Stodart: I am afraid that my hon. Friend is, as he knows, trying to draw me on something on which I am not proposing to be drawn.

Mr. Mackie: Is the Minister not aware that my hon. Friend's original question was about milk supplies, and that he did


not mention liquid milk? What about manufacturing milk? What promises will the Minister and his right hon. Friend make to the farmers during the election? Considering the Chancellor's recent speeches about austerity, how will they manage to carry them out?

Mr. Stodart: The actual production of milk for the year may show a very small reduction on 1972–73 overall. The review is under discussion. I cannot anticipate what my right hon. Friend will say.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Is it not essential, if the housewife is to have ample suplies of both milk and beef, that farmers should have an assured market and a reasonable profit to make it worth their while producing them? [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. By the traditions of my office I am not allowed to attend any election meetings—though I am quite enjoying this afternoon.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Bearing in mind that the well-being of dairy farming and beef production is so closely interlocked, will my right hon. Friend enable both to expand by giving a very early anouncement of a price review that will enable that expansion, and by implementing that review immediately, and preferably retrospectively?

Mr. Stodart: The announcement of the price review will be not long delayed. Further than that I would not wish to go.

Mr. Gwynoro Jones: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that the decline in the dairy herd since September has been very significant? Indeed, at present cows are being slaughtered which are in calf, which is something that has never happened previously. Does not the Minister accept that the decline is alarming, in terms of next winter?

Mr. Stodart: We have no figures more recent than those for September. They do not exist. I have seen Press reports and have listened to radio reports about the slaughtering of cows in calf. We have made the most searching inquiries. The answer is that the number of cows slaughtered when in calf shows no significant difference from the number of such slaughterings which usually take place,

and that the pregnancy of the cows is a matter of weeks rather than months.

Intervention Board

Mr. Moyle: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how much has been spent by the Intervention Board to date on intervention buying, payments to private storers for taking food off the market, and denaturing incentives respectively.

Mr. Anthony Stodart: To 31st December 1973 £16·5 million had been spent on intervention buying, £3 million on aids to private storage, £441 in compensation to producer groups and £19·7 million on denaturing incentives. Aids to private storage, payments to producer groups, and denaturing incentives are financed by the European Agricultural Guidance and Guarantee Fund. The net cost of purchases into intervention is recovered from the fund when the product is sold.

Mr. Moyle: Has not everything that we have heard this afternoon made it clear that the Intervention Board is an obnoxious Conservative invention to force a high cost of living on the British people? Why have the Government lost their chance of abolishing it before they leave office?

Mr. Stodart: No, Sir. It is a method of giving producers of valuable food a chance of continuing to do so.

Mr. Jay: As the Minister admits that the Intervention Board has been hoarding large quantities of food—now including beef—in order to hold up prices, how can he pretend that it is not Government policy which is responsible for the present high price of food?

Mr. Stodart: If the right hon. Gentleman really thinks that 25 tons of beef is a large proportion of a weekly consumption of 25,000 tons, he is a more jaundiced character than I thought he was.

Mr. Farr: Is not the intervention buying of beef another way of helping agriculture, and is not the fact that the Opposition oppose it so much an indication of just how much they care for the whole industry?

Mr. Stodart: I should have thought that that was obvious from the word "go".

Mr. Deakins: How can intervention buying help to bring down prices for the housewife?

Mr. Stodart: It is because in times of shortage it acts as a very good cushion for releasing foodstuffs from intervention on to the market.

Common Agricultural Policy

Mr. Moate: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what decisions have been reached consequent upon the review of the common agricultural policy; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Denzil Davies: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what decisions on the reform of the common agricultural policy have been taken by the EEC Council of Ministers.

Mr. Godber: The Commission has now included a number of its recommendations on the improvement of the common agricultural policy in its price proposals and these are under consideration by the Council. Other aspects will be considered after the common prices have been settled for this year.

Mr. Moate: Will my right hon. Friend give an estimate of the amount by which he expects these reforms to reduce the United Kingdom contribution to the budget? Is it not the case that these proposals fall far short of the much-needed and thorough-going reform of the CAP that he himself was seeking and that we were promised?

Mr. Godber: I cannot give an estimate of what the effect will be, but I certainly want to move further than this. We have to work on the proposals that the Commission has put forward first and then see how much further we can go. I know that I can count on my hon. Friend's support to do this in the next Parliament.

Mr. Davies: Does the right hon. Gentleman not feel a certain sense of shame in that he has been a member of a Government whose main policy appears to have been confrontation at home and capitulation in Europe? Instead of grovelling to the French, ought not he and his colleagues to have been seeking to carry out a radical reform of the CAP, thereby

contributing to a substantial reduction in the price of food?

Mr. Godber: There is such a total unreality in the basis of that question that the hon. Member must be singularly out of touch with the efforts I have been making in Brussels in this respect. I shall be in Brussels next week, and I invite the hon. Member to assist me in that process.

Sir D. Renton: I acknowledge the important part that my right hon. Friend has played in stimulating the review of the CAP. Will he estimate when this matter is likely to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion?

Mr. Godber: There will be two aspects to my answer on that. First, as I have indicated, certain matters are within the ambit of the discussion on Community prices for the coming year. They must be concluded within the next few weeks. The longer-term issues will be subject to discussion later in the year and I cannot give any time scale in relation to when they will be either agreed or put into operation.

Mr. Hardy: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that that answer will do nothing to remove the suspicion that we shall have a prices-and-a-strike rather than a prices-at-a-stroke election? Will he comment on the answer just given by his right hon. Friend about the intervention board, when he had to defend the indefensible by saying, first, that we had a stockpile of only 25 tons of beef and then saying that these 25 tons would be remarkably effective if there were a serious shortage?

Mr. Godber: The hon. Member appears to be confused in his thinking. The Intervention Board carries out a function within the operation of the common agricultural policy in each country within the Community. We accepted that when we joined, just as the Labour Government said they accepted the CAP when the negotiations started. They have accepted it and we propose to work it. As for beef, a small quantity in Northern Ireland has gone into intervention, but if substantial quantities went to intervention it would prevent a sudden shortage pushing the prices right up. That would be a reassurance to our farmers and our housewives,


who would know that prices could not rise to a very high level.

Mr. Buchan: Will the Minister not just admit openly and honestly that the purpose of the Intervention Board is to keep prices up? Will he give a guarantee that in the forthcoming discussions he will reject any proposals to increase the price of beef? In the meantime will he correct his right hon. Friend about the facts of beef consumption? Is it not a fact that between 1953—when there was rationing—and 1973 the household consumption of beef fell from 37 lbs per head to 19 lbs per head, and that even in the short period of the right hon. Gentleman's Government there has been a 25 per cent. drop since 1970 in the consumption of carcase meat by old-age pensioners?

Mr. Godber: I am sure that the hon. Member does not wish to mislead the House, but nevertheless succeeds on occasions. I have given the true facts many times concerning the official figures of food moving into consumption. That should be of interest to the hon. Member, because it covers all types of food. In addition, the consumption of meat has risen and has continued to rise as a totality, and that includes all types of beef. I know that the hon. Member will be pleased to know that in a week towards the end of January—the last week for which I have seen figures—the amount of beef available on the market was 6,000 tons more than in the corresponding week the year before. That shows that more is available for the housewife as a result of the Government's policy.

Import Levies

Mr. Julius Silverman: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the present import levy on butter imported into the United Kingdom from outside the EEC.

Mrs. Fenner: After applying the monetary compensatory amounts, the general levy applied to imports of butter from third countries is £167·06 per ton. Imports from New Zealand are subject to the special arrangements provided for under Protocol 18.

Mr. Silverman: Does not the levy, even if it does not apply to New Zealand, regulate the price of all butter sold here? When the Minister goes to Brussels to

seek a review of the CAP will he press for the abolition of this levy, and in any event will he or the succeeding Government abolish it?

Mrs. Fenner: Imports of butter from countries outside the Community, that is, countries other than New Zealand, have effectively ceased and the retail prices of butter are currently lower than at 1st February last year because of the EEC's consumer subsidy.

Mr. Deakins: Is it not disgraceful that at this time of high food prices we should be putting further taxes on food imports in order to keep up the price of food to the housewife?

Mrs. Fenner: During 1971 when there was a general shortage of dairy products butter was much more expensive than it is now. It has been 7p a lb. down on the prices for the first half of 1972.

Mr. Jay: But why do the Government impose this tax of £167 on butter?

Mrs. Fenner: This is a Community levy on third countries, but as we do not import from third countries, other than New Zealand, which is subject to special arrangements, it does not involve an imposition on the housewife.

Mr. Farr: As the price of butter today is about 10 per cent. below what it was in 1959, why do the Opposition not acknowledge that fact?

Mrs. Fenner: I cannot add anything to what my hon. Friend said.

International Commodity Agreements

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to what extent the Government are trying to stimulate interest in international commodity agreements, especially in food commodities.

Mrs. Fenner: We have always considered that in appropriate circumstances international agreements on trade in food commodities can be valuable, and fully support the EEC's proposal, in the GATT trade negotiations, of using them to bring more stability and expansion to agricultural trade. Recent world food supply fluctuations have reinforced international attention on this.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Will she bear in mind that stability in international commodities is of continuing importance to us, and that the sugar agreement is an excellent example of what can be achieved?

Mrs. Fenner: I agree with my hon. Friend. We hope that the Community will joint the 1970 International Sugar Agreement in due course.

Food Prices

Mr. Coleman: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what decreases bearing on food prices were approved by the EEC Council of Ministers in January 1974.

Mr. Molloy: asked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what increases bearing on the price of food were approved by the EEC Council of Ministers at its meetings in January 1974.

Mr. Godber: There were two Council decisions bearing on the price of food. One was to change the representative rate for Italian lire, of which the practical effect will be limited to Italy. The other was to remove a legal obstacle to the early introduction of a limited and temporary system of aids for private storage of beef, thus reducing the need for intervention in those parts of the Community where the market is particularly weak.

Mr. Coleman: I am not surprised at that answer; I expected it. Have any major foodstuffs been reduced in price, about which the Minister's right hon. Friend the Prime Minister can tell the housewives of Leicester?

Mr. Godber: If the hon. Gentleman expected that answer, I wonder why he put down the Question. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary made it perfectly clear only a few minutes ago that one foodstuff which Labour Members used as an arguing point a great deal before we entered the Community—butter—has fallen in price since we joined.

Mr. Marten: What is the Government's view about the proposed tax on surplus milk?

Mr. Godber: I have already commented on that. There are two separate proposals. One is for a general tax

affecting all milk produce going to dairies. The other is a tax on milk products going into intervention. I see little merit in the first proposal, which seems to me unnecessary, but I think that the second could prove a useful deterrent to the production of surplus milk products, and therefore I intend to support it.

Mr. Molloy: Is the Minister aware of anything that goes on in his Department, other than the diktats he receives from Brussels? Is he aware that it is not particularly edifying to see a Minister of the Crown acting as an apologist for a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels laying down their instructions and orders for the British people? This is one of the things the British people will decide to end at the forthcoming General Election. The right hon. Gentleman's rôle as an apologist for the EEC will be terminated.

Mr. Godber: The hon. Gentleman seems to be singularly misinformed about what goes on in Brussels, and his forecast of what will happen in this country is wrong. I do not accept any of his statements. In regard to what I do in Brussels, I say to him, in the words of somebody famous in the last century, that if he can believe that he can believe anything.

Mr. David Clark: In view of the high price of food, for which the Minister bears a great deal of responsibility, will the right hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that he will not agree to any increase at a Council meeting, and that he is not running away from the three-bob loaf at the General Election?

Mr. Godber: I am not running away from anything. Requests for price increases must be considered in the light of cost increases. I have no desire to see unnecessary price rises, but one must seek to ensure that in the Community as a whole, just as in this country—[Interruption.] Farmers have had a substantial rise, and this Government will continue to support them both now and after the election.

Mr. McBride: Is the Minister aware that as a result of our membership of the EEC there has been no decrease in the price of foods that this country imports? Cheese bears a tax of £200, butter a tax of £167, and canned ham a tax of £140. How long will the right hon. Gentleman


seek to give the lie to an unbelieving nation?

Mr. Godber: There is no question of giving a lie. This Government tell the truth about this and other matters. However much the hon. Gentleman seeks to distort them, the facts are that the price of butter has dropped and the price of cheese has been relatively static over the past two years. This country has had a far smaller increase in food prices than many other countries in the past year. They have risen by 20 per cent., but in the world they have risen by 50 per cent. in the same time.

Oral Answers to Questions — ETON

Miss Lestor: asked the Prime Minister if he will pay an official visit to Eton.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): I have at present no plans to do so, Sir.

Miss Lestor: Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider that answer, bearing in mind that during the last election campaign he told the electorate of Slough the benefits that would come to them from joining the EEC, asking them to rely totally on his judgment? Will he now go to Eton—the other side of my constituency—thus ensuring a uniform swing to Labour throughout the constituency, such as we had last time, explaining why he was not prepared to go to the electorate on the question of a mandate over Europe but is prepared to go to the electorate to ask whether the miners have the right to refuse to work overtime?

The Prime Minister: Everything I said about Europe at Slough in the last election was confirmed by a majority of 112 in the House.

Sir Gilbert Longden: Whilst I make no value judgment about Eton or any other public school, may I ask my right hon. Friend roundly to assert that the future of the country depends, as its past has depended, upon the defence of excellence against the ceaseless attacks of the the envious, and that the Socialist Party is the eradicator of excellence and the midwife of the second-rate?

The Prime Minister: I congratulate my hon. Friend on a memorable phrase, of which many of us will no doubt wish to make use. It is undoubtedly the case that the Conservative Party stands for an element of choice in education, which it is absolutely right that parents should have.

Mr. Skinner: If the Prime Minister will not go to Eton, will he go to Leicester on 14th February—Valentine's Day—to address the housewives, invite the television cameras, and let the nation witness the massacre?

The Prime Minister: Once again the hon. Gentleman will be in for a great disappointment, because the housewives recognise that it is this Government who are righting inflation.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEPARTMENTAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Mr. Sydney Chapman: asked the Prime Minister if he will arrange for co-ordination between the Scottish and Welsh Offices and other Government Departments to permit those other Departments, in providing information and statistics relating to their responsibilities, to give parallel information for Scotland and Wales.

The Prime Minister: Departments providing information about their responsibilities give parallel information for Scotland and Wales whenever it is appropriate and practicable to do so.

Mr. Chapman: I did not hear my right hon. Friend's answer.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I did not hear it either.

The Prime Minister: With the leave of the House, I shall repeat it. Departments providing information about their responsibilities give parallel information for Scotland and Wales whenever it is appropriate and practicable to do so.

Mr. Chapman: I am grateful for that information. Some hon. Members who table Questions have been finding it difficult to get statistics and information relating to Great Britain or the United Kingdom. As the Question refers to parliamentary Questions, is my right hon. Friend aware that the latest definition of


an optimist is a Labour Member still seen to be tabling Questions this morning for parliamentary answer?

The Prime Minister: I know that my hon. Friend and others have recently been disappointed that information has not been given in that form. Owing to the regulations governing the answering of Questions it was not practicable, in the time available, to get the split-up which my hon. Friends and other hon. Members required. There is a general rule that, wherever Questions seek statistical information in a particular form, the information will be given in that form. We shall do our utmost in future to ensure that that is the case.

Mr. Pavitt: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when hon. Members seek to make comparisons with past figures relating to the National Health Service, concerning, for example, the changeover in the Welsh Office away from England and Scotland, the creation of the Welsh Office separately from the English and Scottish Departments makes it extremely difficult to put Questions such as those relating to long waiting lists, queue jumping, private practice, and so on? It would be helpful if we could always have comparable figures for the three separate Departments.

The Prime Minister: That is not an aspect of Questions which has been brought to my notice. I shall gladly try to ensure that that happens in future.

Oral Answers to Questions — SEX EQUALITY

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Prime Minister if he is satisfied with the co-ordination between the Departments of Education, Employment, the Home Office and Social Services in the implementation of Government policies on equality of rights for men and women.

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. There is close and frequent consultation between the Departments concerned on implementation of the Government's policies to promote equal opportunities for men and women and to eliminate unfair discrimination on grounds of sex.

Mr. Hamilton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when the Leader of the House said that he would introduce

a Bill on this matter in a matter of weeks few hon. Members believed that that would ever come about? Is the right hon. Gentleman further aware that the Leader of the House has been deceiving and depriving women all his life—[Interruption.] I withdraw the latter part of that question. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that he deceived women when he came to power, and that he is deceiving them as he goes out?

The Prime Minister: The Government published their proposals in "Equal Opportunities for Men and Women". The House will be interested to know that we received comments on the proposals from about 300 organisations and more than 1,000 individuals. There has therefore been a widespread response to the request that there should be a public debate on this matter and that views should be formulated. It is unfair to accuse my right hon. Friend of deceit. He will be introducing a Bill directly Parliament resumes.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: On the question of equal rights, will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that after the election the men and women of Peterborough confidently expect the Government to play fair by them and give them their proper reward for being good neighbours to London and accepting London's overspill under the new towns procedure?

The Prime Minister: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the ingenuity of his question in view of the Question on the Order Paper.

Mr. Edward Short: Has the Prime Minister read the Labour Party's document on discrimination? If he has not, I shall send him a copy and he can read it in the long period of leisure ahead of him.

The Prime Minister: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on taking over the leadership of his party. The Government have put forward a very good policy and it is obvious that it has the support of the electorate.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FARMERS' UNION

Mr. Pardoe: asked the Prime Minister how many times he has met representatives of the National Farmers' Union.

The Prime Minister: I have met representatives of the National Farmers' Union on a number of occasions, and most recently on 26th September and 15th October last year.

Mr. Pardoe: Did the President of the National Farmers' Union tell the right hon. Gentleman in October that he was producing milk at a loss? Is it not a remarkable achievement that the Government should have presided over a catastrophic rise in the price of food to the housewife and a catastrophic fall in profits for the farmer at one and the same time? How was it done? Will the right hon. Gentleman guarantee that milk production will be profitable before 28th February?

The Prime Minister: What we discussed at both meetings was the great price increase in feeding stuffs which dairy farmers have had to finance over the past few months. It was as a result of these discussions that it was agreed to bring forward the price review, to take account of price increases. It is well known that under this Government there has been a tremendous increase in the expansion of agriculture. The hon. Gentleman should know that the profitability of agriculture for dairy farmers has been satisfactory until the past few months. That is a matter of common agreement between the NFU and, I hope, both sides of the House, and it is a matter which we must put right.

Sir Robin Turton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the plight of the pig farmer and the dairy farmer is desperate and that it is in the national interest to introduce measures of encouragement at an early stage, so that we can expand production and cut down an import bill which last year amounted to £2,300 million?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my right hon. Friend the Father of the House. I have already assured the House that this matter is being dealt with at the earliest possible time by bringing forward the price review. We are determined to see that dairy farming continues to expand.

Mr. Buchan: Will the right hon. Gentleman be telling the people in the coming weeks that it will cost the taxpayer and the consumer several hundred

million pounds in the price review to make up for his policy deficiencies? Will he make it clear that one of the reasons for his flight from Parliament is that he does not want to fight the election on the three-bob loaf?

The Prime Minister: There is no justification for either of those allegations. Other hon. Members have been saying in the House that it is the farmers themselves who have been financing the increase in the price of feeding stuffs and that in some cases they may even be engaged in dairy farming at a loss. That is not a burden on the taxpayer. It is necessary to maintain expansion, and the matter must be put right.

Oral Answers to Questions — TUC (MEETINGS)

Mr. Radice: asked the Prime Minister what further conversations he has had with the TUC.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Tebbit) on 5 th February.

Mr. Radice: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why the Government have cold-shouldered the TUC-CBI initiative? Is it not clear that the TUC has done everything it can to help the Government out of their difficulties? Why have the Government now chosen to run away from their responsibilities?

The Prime Minister: I presume that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the talks which were held yesterday and about which we were informed. It is a matter of regret that they came to nothing. Far from cold-shouldering the TUC or the CBI, I have frequently been accused in the House, of having far too many talks and working far too closely with both the TUC and the CBI, to the detriment of Parliament. I have never accepted that, but no one in the country can accuse me of cold-shouldering the TUC.

Mr. Selwyn Gummer: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the TUC and the Labour Party would do the country a great deal more good if they supported the 5½ million people who have settled under phase 3?

The Prime Minister: Yes, that is perfectly true. I wish that the Opposition had supported fully the initiative which we took and which I was asked to take in dealing speedily with the relativities machinery. Further, I wish that the Leader of the Opposition and his party had been prepared to say that a national strike would not be in the national interest.

Mr. Thorpe: When the Prime Minister asked the TUC to co-operate with him in setting up a relativities board, did he tell it when the Government proposed to do so, or was that a piece of propaganda?

The Prime Minister: I said that we were prepared to do it at once.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: If my right hon. Friend does meet the TUC in the next few days, will he remind it that if the Transport and General Workers' Union had not practised discrimination against women Londoners might now have more buses and underground trains with women drivers?

The Prime Minister: I do not wish to go back over the past, because this matter is now being put right, and I hope that it will be of benefit to Londoners. It has been one of the joint objectives of the TUC, the CBI and the Government to bring about equal pay as fairly and as quickly as possible.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Is the Prime Minister aware that we have insisted all along throughout these days that a national strike would be against the national interest? Is he further aware that if he fails to build on the preparatory work of the CBI and the TUC and does not call the parties together even now and say that the Government are prepared to see money placed on the table, on account, while the relativities board or whatever machinery is agreed looks to the longer-term problem, the responsibility for the strike will be on the obduracy of one man?

The Prime Minister: It is well within the recollection of the House that when I asked the right hon. Gentleman to stand up and tell the House that he condemned a national strike he flatly refused to do so. It is on the record, and the whole country knows it. It is absolutely clear. The right hon. Gentleman asked

me to set up the relativities machinery as quickly as possible. I told both the TUC and the CBI that I would do so and that it would then immediately consider the position. Then the right hon. Gentleman ratted on everything he had said. That, too, is on the record, and everyone knows it.

Mr. Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I called for an urgent examination—I told him how he should do it—and not one three months long? Will he now answer the question which he dodged in his correspondence with me yesterday? The Lord President of the Council last Sunday said that there "will" be more money for the miners, and the Prime Minister wrote back and said that if certain things happened there "would" be. Is it "will" or "would"?

The Prime Minister: I sent to the right hon. Gentleman the text from which the quotation from my right hon. Friend's speech was made. My right hon. Friend said:
If the body examining them accepts all or part of the case, then of course it will mean extra money.
This, I would have thought, was quite obvious to everyone.

MESSAGE ON BEHALF OF THE QUEEN

Proclamation of State of Emergency

Message on behalf of Her Majesty brought up, and read by Mr. SPEAKER, as follows:
The Emergency Powers Act 1920, as amended by the Emergency Powers Act 1964, having enacted that if it appears to Her Majesty that there have occurred or are about to occur events of such a nature as to be calculated, by interfering with the supply and and distribution of food, water, fuel or light, or with the means of locomotion, to deprive the community, or any substantial portion of the community, of the essentials of life, Her Majesty may, by Proclamation, declare that a state of emergency exists:
And Her Majesty having on the ninth day of January 1974 made, in pursuance thereof, a Proclamation declaring that the industrial disputes affecting persons employed in the coal mines and on the railways and the reduction of oil supplies reaching Great Britain did, in Her opinion, constitute a state of emergency within the meaning of the said Act of 1920 as so amended, which Proclamation does not remain in force for more than one month:
We, Counsellors of State, to whom have been delegated certain Royal Functions as specified


in Letters Patent dated the twenty-fourth day of January 1974, being of the opinion that the continuance of the said industrial disputes and the continued reduction in those oil supplies constitute a state of emergency within the meaning of the said Act of 1920 as so amended, have, in pursuance thereof, made on Her Majesty's behalf a Proclamation dated the seventh day of February 1974 declaring that a state of emergency exists.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Robert Carr): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement.
Under the provisions of the Emergency Powers Act 1920 the Proclamation made on 9th January will expire at midnight tomorrow, together with the regulations made in pursuance of that Proclamation. Since there has been no resolution of the disputes affecting the coal mines and the railways and there is still a short-fall in our oil supplies, the Government consider that it is necessary for the state of emergency to be continued. A further Proclamation and emergency regulations have therefore been made by the Counsellors of State acting on Her Majesty's behalf during Her absence from the United Kingdom. The regulations—the Emergency (No. 2) Regulations 1974—are in substance the same as those laid before Parliament on 9th January and will come into force at midnight tomorrow. They will be laid before Parliament later today and copies will be available to Members in the Vote Office as soon as possible.
As always, use of the emergency powers will be limited to measures necessary in the public interest.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: The House will note that this Government, who have proclaimed more states of emergency than any other, have now appropriately completed the record by being the only one in history to leave the nation with a state of emergency and without a Parliament.

Mr. Carr: The use of emergency powers is always not only serious but regrettable. It is what happens when moderation in a democracy goes out of the window.

Mr. Ogden: How can General Election preparations properly be carried out, how can free expression of opinion be allowed to take place in meeting halls, and so on, and how can the work of printers, postmen

and everyone else be allowed to take place in a state of emergency? As the Government are asking the miners to withdraw their strike action, why are they not prepared to withdraw, or at least postpone, their state of emergency?

Mr. Carr: I understand that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will probably have something to say about the matter raised in the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question at the appropriate moment. Emergency powers exist for one purpose only—to maintain the necessities of life for the nation. They will be used as little as possible. That is an absolute truth. The less they have to be used the better everyone will be pleased.

Mr. Rost: Will the Home Secretary give an assurance that the emergency powers will, if necessary, be used to prevent the flying pickets—being organised at this moment by the Communist leaders of the National Union of Mine-workers—from disrupting the whole country and its services?

Mr. Carr: The law dealing with picketing exists quite outside the emergency powers. Such powers are not necessary to cope with that problem.

Mr. Kelley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there will be a deep suspicion in the country about the purposes behind the declaration that has been made? Is he aware that this will mean that in the greatest industrial crisis we have ever faced there will be government without Parliament? Is he further aware that in the coalfields there are people who are concerned about the prepararations that are being made to deal with normal picketing activities? Is he also aware that these things can be done without the sanction of Parliament?

Mr. Carr: I do not believe that there is deep suspicion in the country. I know that there would be deep disturbance in the country if the Government could not take the action necessary to maintain the essentials of life of the community. There is absolutely no truth in any suggestion that there is any preparation to deal with normal picketing activity. Such activity is and has long been protected by the law. Peaceful picketing means the right peacefully to communicate and


peacefully to persuade people in pursuit of an industrial dispute.

Mr. Russell Kerr: Humbug.

Mr. Wellbeloved: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the people of this country will take note of the simple fact that in June 1970 the Conservative administration took office in an atmosphere of peace and prosperity and that in February 1974 they abdicate office leaving behind catastrophe and disaster?

Mr. Carr: I remember what succeeded "In Place of Strife".

Mr. Gorst: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if rampant inflation, greater than exists now, succeeds the General Election, then this or any other Government will have to come back to the House to ask for emergency regulations which will not be for one month but may be for a generation?

Mr. Carr: I am sure that holding the line against inflation is even more important in terms of the defence of society and democracy than it is in economic terms. It is just because we are doing this that we are determined to seek the approval of the people for the line we are taking.

Mr. Harold Wilson: Dealing with the rampant inflation of which the hon. Member for speaking, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he agrees with the Economist and other Conservative newspapers when they said that the reason for an early election would be that the 11 per cent. inflation of the past year under this Government would rise to 15 per cent. in the coming months?

Mr. Carr: What I remember from that independent newspaper the Conservative—[Laughter.]— I am getting confused with the Labour Record and apologise to the House for my confusion. What I remember from the independent newspaper, the Economist, is that it pointed out in a satistical analysis not many weeks ago that in 1973, for the first time for many years, this country's record in controlling domestic inflation was better than that of almost any other country in the world. I also remember and agree with the right hon. Gentleman's statement that one man's pay increase is another man's price increase.

Mr. Burden: May I remind my right hon. Friend that in July 1967 the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) said in this House that if members of the public, or workingmen, tried to obtain an increase in wages as a result of devaluation, they should be "ruthlessly resisted"?

Mr. Carr: That is another statement with which I agree.

Mr. Ashton: Is it not an absolute denial of democracy and does it not amount to censorship, that during this election period television should be switched off at 10.20 p.m. or 10.30 p.m.? Have we not a tradition of late-night, serious discussion of electoral issues during an election campaign? Since television uses only 1 per cent. of the electricity supply, may I ask the Home Secretary to announce that the ban has been lifted and that programmes may continue until midnight?

Mr. Carr: As I said to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden), these matters wil be dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Lord President.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): I beg to move, That Her Majesty's Most Gracious Message be taken into consideration tomorrow.

Message to be considered tomorrow.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): In view of the statement about dissolution, Mr. Speaker, I should like to announce revised business for today and tomorrow.
Today, the House will be invited to deal with an Appropriation Bill to allot Voted Supply, and with the Pensions (Increase) Bill. In addition, consideration of a Bill to implement recommendations from Mr. Speaker's Conference on candidates' expenses will also be proposed.
On Friday, Mr. Speaker, the House will, as usual, meet at 11 a.m. Prior to Prorogation approval will be sought to a number of procedural motions, to any further emergency regulations, and to


any Lords Amendments which may be received.
Yesterday afternoon, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister received a letter from you, Mr. Speaker, with a report from your Conference on Electoral Law relating to candidates' election expenses at parliamentary elections. The report has now been published, and copies are available in the Vote Office.
In view of my right hon. Friend's announcement earlier today, the Government have thought it right to prepare a short Bill to give immediate effect to the Conference recommendations. Later today my right hon. Friend will ask for leave to introduce this Bill, which the House will be invited to proceed to consider through all its stages today. If, as I hope, the Bill can be similarly considered in another place tomorrow, it can receive the Royal Assent in time for it to have effect at the forthcoming election.
I believe that this action will commend itself to right hon. and hon. Members on all sides of the House. Unfortunately it will not be possible for prints of the Bill to be available before the Bill is introduced, but copies of the draft Bill are available in the Vote Office.
In view of the questions asked of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, may I add that premises used for election purposes, including the printing of election addresses, will be exempted from the order on the three-day week, but not from the heating and lighting restrictions, for the duration of the election campaign. For the same period the restriction on television hours will be lifted. The position of periodicals is under consideration in view of the effect of restrictions on political comment.

Mr. Harold Wilson: If Mr. Speaker will liberally allow me to ask this question as arising out of the statement, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a few minutes ago we heard the last question from the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton), which was for this side of the House, and I am sure for his own, a very moving occasion. I am sure that we all wish to pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been a servant of the House for

so many years, and to wish him all happiness on his retirement.
On the changed business announced by the Leader of the House, in the circumstances that have now arisen it is clearly right that today's debate should be scrapped, although the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister and I—and probably others—had quite remarkable speeches prepared in the hope of catching your eye, Mr. Speaker. There may be other occasions for using them in the next few days. Speaking for my right hon. and hon. Friends, we shall do all we can to co-operate in getting the business through. We particularly welcome the fact that the Government have moved with all reasonable speed on the message which came from you, Mr. Speaker, as Chairman of the Speaker's Conference.
On the last announcement made by the right hon. Gentleman, which goes wider than the normal statement, does he realise that it is ludicrous for printing and other establishments—for example, committee rooms—to be allowed to use electric power but for there to be no lighting and no heating? How can this job be done adequately in the dark in a democratic election?

Mr. Prior: I will certainly consider the last point raised by the right hon. Gentleman. I do not think there is any difficulty about that but, if there is any question of printing not being able to be done at the legitimate time, of course we will consider this again. I have no reason to think that that is not covered.
I know that all my colleagues in the House will wish to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the generous tribute he paid to my right hon. Friend the Father of the House and also to thank the Father of the House for all the services he has rendered, not least as Chairman of the Committee on Procedure for several years. We all wish him a long and happy retirement.

Mr. Grimond: May we as Liberals be associated with the tributes that have been paid to the Father of the House? Will the Leader of the House make a statement about the heating and lighting of schools, halls and committee rooms for election meetings? One can imagine few more unpleasant situations for a country


than being plunged into a General Election at the same time as a major strike and a major economic crisis. Do the Government intend to inform the House of any response they may make to the suggestion on the news tapes that Mr. Gormley might call off the strike for the period of the election?

Mr. Prior: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has written to Mr. Gormley asking him to call off the strike whilst the election is in progress.
On the question of lighting and heating halls, I understand that provision is already made for the heating and lighting of halls and schools for election purposes. The general heating and lighting restrictions that apply restrict the temperature to 63 degrees and allow reasonable levels of light. That is all that is implied by my remarks.

Mr. Hugh Fraser: In view of what the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) said and the statement made by the Leader of the Opposition, would it not be reasonable, so that the election can be conducted in a civilised fashion, for the miners to call off their strike during the election period and for the Government to restore a five-day working week during that period?

Mr. Prior: There is very much to recommend in what my right hon. Friend suggests.

Mr. Faulds: As his last stint before he loses his job permanently, will the right hon. Gentleman make speedy arrangements to have erected on one of the plinths out there in the Members' Lobby a rubber statue of the imminently ex-Prime Minister bearing the words carved in stone, "The Wrecker"?

Mr. Prior: I have been longing to have a chance to reply to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that he will have a good chance to go back to the job which he occupied before and take part in another film such as "Young Winston" in which he played the part of a mounted Boer.

Mr. Dykes: Hesitating though I do to intervene after that remark, may I ask my right hon. Friend, while he is dealing with the essential business of the House before the Dissolution, whether he agrees that it is vitally urgent for the whole

House to send our good wishes to the Leader of the Opposition, who is the only man in England capable of bringing the country to a successful conclusion?

Mr. Prior: I think that I have stuck my neck out far enough.

Mr. William Hannan: May I ask the Leader of the House a rather technical question which is nevertheless important in the running of elections? Will the election be fought on the current register, the draft register or the new register, as the new register came out, at least in Scotland, on 15th February?

Mr. Prior: On the new register.

Mr. Hannan: Does the Leader of the House take in the importance of that, as 15th February is only 13 days before the voting day? Has consideration been given to that?

Mr. Prior: Consideration has been given to that, but it was thought far better to hold the election on the new register. In any case the old register goes out of use on that date.

Dame Joan Vickers: As we speak so much about equality between men and women, may I pay a tribute to the Mother of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), for the courageous work she has always carried out in the House and for the excellent way in which she has served her constituency?

Mr. Prior: It will be a great regret for me in the next Parliament that I shall not be able to answer questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) about the Kielder dam. I am certain that the whole House will join me in extending our best wishes to her and to all the other right hon. and hon. Members who will not be standing again for election.

Mr. Speaker: Order. This is becoming a very sentimental occasion. My difficulty is that I am trying to call every hon. Member whom I know will not be coming back to the House, but there are quite a number of others about whom I am not sure whether or not they will in fact be returning.

Dr. Dickson Mabon: I am obliged to you, Mr. Speaker, for that vote of confidence, which I hope my constituents will


reciprocate. I have two points to put to the Leader of the House. First, will he look into the question of urging electoral registration officers who have registers available to make them available as soon as they can, rather than leaving the matter until the official day this month? Will he also look into the question, which will have a great effect on polling day in terms of the emergency regulations, whether we can have the lights full on for the election so that the country will return a decent Government?

Mr. Prior: If there is any difficulty over the latter point raised by the hon. Gentleman, I shall look into it. On his first point, I understand that the situation is that where the new registers are already printed, there is no reason why political candidates should not have them in advance.

Dame Irene Ward: So that I shall not disappoint my right hon. Friend, may I ask him to tell me, since he recently stated that the order on the Kielder Dam will be laid next week, when Parliament will not now be sitting, what will happen about that order? In the interests of providing water for my part of the world, I should like to know what is the situation.

Mr. Prior: I regret to have to tell my hon. Friend that I have not briefed myself as well as I should have done about next week's business, but I shall keep in touch with my hon. Friend and see what statement can be made on that point before tomorrow morning.

Mr. English: Will the right hon. Gentleman be a little more explicit about the procedure motions that he proposes to introduce tomorrow? I know that he is aware that some of those motions are non-controversial, whereas others contravene recommendations made by both the Labour and Conservative Parties.

Mr. Prior: These procedural motions include a motion to take over Private Members' time—that applies to the commencement of public business before the Orders of the Day are begun; there is a motion to ensure that our delegates to the European Parliament can continue to serve despite their ceasing to be Members at Westminster; then there is a suspension of private Bills to carry them over into the new Parliament, and there may be one or two others.

Orders of the Day — SUPPLY

ALLOTTED DAY

Orders of the Day — APPROPRIATION BILL

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Terence Higgins): I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to appropriate the supplies granted in this Session of Parliament; that, notwithstanding the practice of the House relating to the interval between various stages of Bills of aids and supplies, more than one stage of any Bill brought in pursuant to this order may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting; and that so soon as any such Bill has been read a Second time, the House will immediately resolve itself into a Committee on the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Tom Boardman, Mr. Terence Higgins and Mr. John Nott.

CONSOLIDATION FUND (APPROPRIATION)

Bill to appropriate the supplies granted in this Session of Parliament, presented accordingly and read the First time; and ordered to be printed. [Bill 67.]

Bill read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

Bill immediately considered in Committee, pursuant to the Order of the House this day.

[Sir Robert Grant-Ferris in the Chair]

Clause 1

APPROPRIATION OF SUMS VOTED FOR SUPPLY SERVICES

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: As the House has not copies of the Bill, would it not be possible for the clause to be read out?

The Chairman of Ways and Means: I understand that copies are available in the Vote Office and, much as I should like to oblige the hon. and gallant Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles), I think I had better keep to the normal rule.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedules agreed to.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Motion made and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 93 (Consolidated Fund Bills), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL

4.8 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Mark Carlisle): I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to increase the limits on candidates' election expenses at elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and for connected purposes.
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House explained earlier, the Government thought it right to introduce this Bill to give immediate effect to the recommendation of Mr. Speaker's Conference. The effect of it is that the Conference recommended that the limit on candidates' election expenses should be £1,072 instead of £750 as at present, plus 6p instead of 5p as at present for every six county constituency electors, or for eight borough constituency electors. The Bill will give effect to that recommendation, except that the figure of £1,072 has been rounded up to the figure of £1,075.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Robert Carr, Mr. James Prior, Mr. Gordon Campbell, Mr. Francis Pym and Mr. Mark Carlisle.

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE

Bill to increase the limits on candidates' election expenses at elections to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and for connected purposes, presented accordingly, read the First time; and ordered to be printed. [Bill 85.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

4.9 p.m.

Mr. George Cunningham: I object, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that there are very few people in the House who know what is happening. As I understand it, this House is about to pass some legislation on to the statute book. Despite all the difficulties, I have just about managed to follow what is going on. I shall be grateful if you, Mr. Speaker, would confirm that we have now reached the Second Reading stage.

Mr. Speaker: The Question is, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Mr. Cunningham: I suggest that when the House of Commons is passing legislation, for it to go not at a trot but at a disgraceful gallop, such as has happened, is totally contrary to any decent traditions of this House.

Sir John Rodgers: Where are the Opposition?

Mr. Cunningham: It does not matter whether there are 630 hon. Members or only two hon. Members in the Chamber. There are frequently only two or three hon. Members in the Chamber when legislation is being passed. But hon. Members who might be interested in the legislation which we are now being asked to pass should have not only a technical but also a real and practical opportunity to read the Bill. I have just looked at the first 50 words or so of the Bill. I have not had time to read the whole Bill, although I guess that there are only about 200 words in the text.
If this country had a written constitution—some day we must get round to having something of that sort—no doubt what we are being asked to do now would be impossible. No sensible country would


permit the passage of two bits of legislation in the manner which we are now adopting. We are now considering the second piece of legislation, having galloped through the first piece in 30 seconds flat.
I have no doubt that the proposal in the Bill has been looked at very thoroughly and professionally by Mr. Speaker's Conference. But I have not heard any statement of the reasons why the Bill should be passed. So far as I noticed, the Minister did not even intend to offer any explanation to the House on Second Reading. No doubt he will now get up and say something. We were going to give a Second Reading to the Bill without the Minister saying a word. That is entirely wrong.
I appreciate that technically he does not have to say anything. But it is reasonable for the Minister, in presenting a Bill and asking for it to be passed, to offer for the record, if for nothing else, an explanation of the figures in the Bill.
I do not know whether the provisions in the Bill are good or bad and I shall not allow it to be passed without that being recorded. I hope that the Minister will give an explanation of the figures in the Bill, how they have been arrived at, why these figures in particular rather than other figures have been adopted, and why he suggests that it is necessary for the House to pass the Bill urgently this afternoon rather than in a proper way.
If the case is good enough and the figures can be justified, I suggest that the haste with which the Bill is going through can be taken only as a criticism of the Government for bringing on a General Election in a situation in which they do not give time for Parliament to pass sensible legislation applying to the conduct of the election.
I look forward to an explanation from the Minister.

Mr. Neil Marten: No doubt, when I have made my point, Mr. Speaker, you will rule whether I am out of order. The Bill concerns the forthcoming election. As we know Parliament will be dissolved tomorrow and we shall cease to be Members of Parliament. I seek your aid, Mr. Speaker. I heard—I wonder whether correctly—that there was a

proposal that the hon. Members who go to the European Assembly should continue to do so during the course of the election campaign.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I can help the hon. Gentleman at once. That is a different matter, which will also come before the House quite separately.

Mr. Marten: Will it be today?

Mr. Speaker: Tomorrow.

Mr. Marten: May I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, and bring my point of order to a conclusion?

Mr. Speaker: Is the point of order on this Bill?

Mr. Marten: It may be, after you have heard me through, Mr. Speaker. The Bill concerns candidates at elections. There is a proposal that people who are not Members of Parliament should be able to go to the European Assembly. According to Article 138(1) of the Treaty of Rome, delegates to the Assembly
shall be designated by the respective Parliaments from among their members".
Therefore, whatever the Government may produce tomorrow must be out of order in relation to the Treaty of Rome.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Whatever may or may not be in order regarding the Treaty of Rome, the matter which the hon. Gentleman is raising is out of order now.

4.15 p.m.

Sir Elwyn Jones: We are engaged in a manifestly grotesque travesty of parliamentary procedure. There seems to be only one copy of the Bill.—[Interruption.]— at least I have been handed one, which is a draft of the Bill. The copy which I have been kindly given by the Minister has significant obliterations in white ink upon it, so the latest thought must have been applied to it.
This is a grotesque travesty which can be justified only by the shambles of the Government's position and the grotesque situation into which they have driven the country.

4.16 p.m.

Mr. Michael Shersby: I do not for a moment agree that it is a grotesque travesty of the procedures of


the House. It is an extremely prudent provision that Parliament should, even at this late hour, make it possible for candidates to spend slightly more on elections than they have been able to spend previously.
I welcome the Bill. It is some years since the limits on expenses were raised. The Bill will better enable many candidates to go into the forthcoming General Election and to lay before the people of the country their views upon which the election will be decided. For these reasons, I welcome the Bill and hope that it will have a speedy passage.

4.17 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I am not against the Bill, but in a Second Reading debate hon. Members are entitled to say whether they support a Bill and to put forward their reasons. We are going into the General Election and every hon. Member present, whatever his party, will be asked certain questions by the voters. One question will be why the old-age pensioners, those on social security benefit, the sick, the infirm and the lame have to wait months or years to get anything done for them.
People who ask this question will be told by Government supporters that the Government have great difficulty in getting legislation through Parliament. Yet here, almost within hours of Parliament being dissolved, we see that the Government—who cannot do anything to help the sick, the aged, the infirm and the lame—can bring in legislation overnight. We shall probably support the Bill, but I suggest that it shows to the electorate that when it suits the Government's purpose—whether in conjunction with the official Opposition I care not—Parliament can work swiftly.—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir J. Rodgers), who always seems to be attending the Council of Europe——

Mr. George Cunningham: Would you exercise your authority, Mr. Speaker, over the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir J. Rodgers) who is continually shouting and interrupting my hon. Friend?

Mr. Speaker: Sometimes I wish I could exercise my authority over the hon. Gentleman himself, who often intervenes in just the same way.

Mr. Lewis: I am sorry that you said that, Mr. Speaker. I have no objection to the hon. Member for Sevenoaks—who spends most of his time in the Council of Europe and who comes to Parliament when it is being dissolved in order to show that he sometimes attends—making inane remarks. I am concerned about a general principle——

Sir J. Rodgers: Will the hon. Gentleman say what we have done for the pensioners, the chronic sick and the aged? Never have a Government done more than we have done in this Parliament.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must intervene here. It is not right to have too wide a debate, and perhaps I may to some extent be at fault, since the Bill would implement a recommendation from my Conference. Yesterday it seemed to the majority of that all-party Conference that something should be offered to the three parties on the basis of an effort to make up the difference in purchasing power since the figures were last laid down. Perhaps I may reveal that I was doubtful whether the parties would agree that something should be done about it in time, but it so happens that they have agreed to do so. It has been done purely in an effort to help candidates of all parties.

Mr. Lewis: I say at once, Mr. Speaker, that no castigation or adverse comment of mine should be taken as reflecting upon you or your Conference. I pay immediate tribute to you personally and to your Conference for both the excellent work which you have done and the speed with which you have arranged for this measure to be introduced. That was in no way the point of my complaint.
If I may now revert to the comments of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks, I am not concerned here with what the Government have or have not done. I am not concerned with what either Government have done. For nearly 30 years now, I have been a Member for Parliament, and my experience has been that all Governments constantly say that they cannot do this, that or the other because they have no time, but when it suits them they can overnight bring in a measure to meet their purposes.
I welcome the Bill now before us, but that should not preclude me from


saying that, while I support the principle, I hope that when there is a Labour Government after the General Election they will not refuse to do things which ought to be done on the ground that there is no time.
This is not the only example. In Northern Ireland affairs, the Government of the day, when it suited them, could bring in a measure to do what they thought essential. I hope that when we come back to power I shall not have to attack my right hon. Friends because they will not do something essential and excuse themselves on grounds of lack of time. If they do, I shall have to remind them that it is possible, and I shall ask them to bring in a number of progressive measures to help the underprivileged. I shall press them to do it as expeditiously as the House is now expected to pass the present Bill.

4.22 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke: I see nothing in the Bill, which arises out of the recommendation of your Conference, Mr. Speaker, which deals with the hour for the closing of polls. At the last General Election, the closing hour was 10 o'clock, I believe, and many people regarded this as unrealistic and too late. I wonder whether my hon. and learned Friend could say something about that, since many people feel that 9 o'clock would be perfectly suitable.

Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that the matter which the hon. Member raises is outside the scope of the Bill. Perhaps I may add that my conscience cannot allow me to accept any sort of halo for acting quickly, since the Conference has been sitting for well over a year and we have many items still to deal with, such as the one which the hon. Member is now raising. But we thought that there was something immediate which we should offer to the House as a matter of urgency, and that is covered by the proposals in the Bill. If a Speaker's Conference is set up again, it will have to consider the point which the hon. Gentleman has raised.

Mr. Cooke: I am very much obliged to you, Mr. Speaker, for your explanation.

4.24 p.m.

Dr. Alan Glyn: I thank you, Mr. Speaker, and your Conference, for what you have recommended on the question of expenses. I have thought about this matter extremely carefully, and, from my point of view, I know that it would be extremely difficult to conduct a proper election campaign on the existing limits. I know that the recommendation came as the result of a meticulous survey, and I thank you, Mr. Speaker, and your Conference very much indeed.

4.25 p.m.

Mr. Dick Leonard: I have no wish to detain the House, but as this will be the last time I speak in this place, at least for some time, I feel that I might be allowed to say that I am not altogether happy about the recommendation embodied in the Bill, although I was a member of your Conference, Mr. Speaker.
I fully accept that there is a strong case for raising the permitted level of expenses to take account of the disastrous inflation which has been raging during the present Government's term of office, but to increase the limits to this extent only a week or two before polling day will give constituency party organisations which already have money in the kitty an opportunity quickly to increase the amount which they spend during the campaign. This will be of considerable advantage in a number of constituencies, and I regret to say that one party in particular is likely to gain from it more benefit than others will.
Also, I regret that nothing has been done to change the differential between borough and county constituencies, which cannot, I believe, be justified in its present form.
Most of all, I regret that Mr. Speaker's Conference was not allowed to discuss not just how much money should be spent but how the money should be provided, and, in particular, the question of State contributions towards election expenses such as one finds now in a large number of democratic countries, and such as are proposed to be introduced even in the United States in 1976. We were not able to consider that matter because the Prime Minister vetoed the suggestion when it came from this side of the House.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Does my hon. Friend mean that one man can dictate to a committee or conference what the House should or should not do? We know that the Prime Minister is a petty dictator, but are we to take it that he had authority to say what Mr. Speaker's Conference should do?

Mr. Speaker: Perhaps I should intervene at this point. It is a well accepted tradition that matters may be considered by a Speaker's Conference only if they have the agreement of the main political parties. It is not a matter of individuals. The parties have to agree on the agenda.

Mr. Leonard: Perhaps I phrased it infelicitously, Mr. Speaker. But the fact remains that the representatives of the Opposition wished that matter to be considered by your Conference. The Government side refused to allow its inclusion in the terms of reference. That is one reason why, although I shall not vote against the Bill today, the welcome which I give it is lukewarm, to say the least.

Sir Elwyn Jones: May I be allowed to say another word, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: If the right hon. and learned Gentleman has the leave of the House, so be it.

Sir Elwyn Jones: Since, purely adventitiously perhaps, I am the only occupant of the Opposition Front Bench at the moment, I should not wish it to be thought that I was churlish or less than deeply grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for the speed with which you have brought this matter before the House. But may I repeat, none the less, my complaint that the Government's way of conducting their business has produced an utter travesty of a method for dealing with the Bill.

4.28 p.m.

Mr. Martin McLaren: Most of us understand the purpose of the Bill very well. As you have said, Mr. Speaker, the intention is merely to implement a recommendation of your Conference. Great respect is always paid to the recommendations of Mr. Speaker's Conference, which consists of hon. Members from all parties.
The recommendation which Mr. Speaker's Conference reached is a matter of common sense, being intended to help us to deal with the effects of inflation which we know so well and to help candidates to conduct an election campaign in the way they have always done. It will help candidates to meet higher printing bills, for example, without running the risk of overspending and transgressing the law. That is the simple purpose of the Bill, and I believe that almost all hon. Members are in favour of it.

4.29 p.m.

Mr. Tom Driberg: Obviously, the provisions of the Bill will be extremely welcome to candidates of all parties, and we do not oppose it in principle. But I think it legitimate to observe, Mr. Speaker, that the recommendation of your Conference is an explicit recognition of the appalling inflation and atrocious rise in the cost of living which has taken place under this outgoing Conservative Government.
Only a week or two ago, a Minister told us quite calmly that there had been a rise in food prices of—I think it was—48½ per cent. since this Government came to power in 1970——

Mr. Arthur Lewis: And it has gone up again since then.

Mr. Driberg: Of course. It goes up every day. That is one of the reasons why we on this side welcome the forthcoming General Election, so that my party, which will then, I believe, be in government—I shall not be here myself—may take practical steps to redeem the present Prime Minister's promise to cut prices at a stroke, or take steps which would reduce inflation at a stroke. The Conservative Government have been totally unsuccessful in redeeming that promise, and the recommendation of Mr. Speaker's Conference is, as I say, a recognition of that fact.
The second matter to which I draw attention is that rushing through this Bill in one day or overnight——

Mr. George Cunningham: In a few minutes.

Mr. Driberg: —is part of the necessity which arises from the Prime Minister's decision to call the General Election with what is really a quite unseemly rush.

Mr. Cunningham: He is abdicating.

Mr. Driberg: As I have said, the early election is welcomed by the Opposition. We have always said the sooner the better. But I remind the right hon. Gentleman that Clement Attlee, at the conclusion of one of his periods of government, announced with general consent from all parties at the time that he was against so-called "snap" elections, that he would not have one, and therefore that he had decided to give a fortnight's clear notice from the day of the announcement of the election to the start of the campaign. That would have been much more decent. It would also have meant that we should not have entirely lost, as we shall now, one or two very valuable pieces of legislation. One which was to have its Second Reading tomorrow is the Children Bill, sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Dr. David Owen). That could not have gone through all its stages, but we could have had a very valuable Second Reading debate.
Although we welcome the election, it is most regrettable that it should be taking place with such an unseemly rush.

4.31 p.m.

Mr. James Lamond: Unlike some of my hon. Friends, I was not all surprised that a Bill could be rushed through all its stages so quickly. I recall what happened with a more important Bill about Northern Ireland, which was rushed through this House in an afternoon and which had a much greater effect than the present one.
However, in my view we should ask ourselves why it is necessary to put any limit on election expenses. It is being done so that unfair advantage will not be given to very wealthy candidates who otherwise would be able to use their wealth unfairly to obtain election to this House. Despite all the respect that we have for Mr. Speaker's Conference and the recommendations which it produces, we as back-bench Members must satisfy ourselves that unfair advantage is not being given to wealthy people. For that reason, it is necessary to examine the proposals in the Bill.
I do not suggest that the Bill gives any unfair advantage. But it is interesting to

try to work out quickly what the new upper limits for election expenses will be. In a county constituency of approximately 50,000 electors, for example, it appears that the upper limit will be in the region of £1,600. I should like the Minister to say what it is at the moment so that we may see by how much the amount is being increased. I hope, too, that he will justify it if he can so that we may hear from his own lips some admission of the tremendous inflation which has gone on under this Government.

4.33 p.m.

Sir Raymond Gower: As a member of Mr. Speaker's Conference, perhaps I might make one or two comments.
I comment kindly upon the remarks of the hon. Member for Barking (Mr. Driberg), who, I understand, is retiring after long and distinguished service to this House. However, the hon. Gentleman spoke as though inflation were a purely British phenomenon and did not obtain in any other country. He suggested, rather naively, that there might be a future Labour Government which would be able to contract out with ease from the inflationary tendencies affecting practically every other progressive industrial country.
Mr. Speaker's Conference had to deal with a very narrow matter here. I accept that the Bill appears to be a rush job and that it should not have been done in this way. However, the right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) will appreciate that in the normal course of events a Speaker's Conference is a fairly leisurely body which considers these matters maturely and that had this Parliament gone on for another six months or a year we should have considered this matter in greater detail.
We are confronted with an immediate problem, and it would serve no good purpose for any candidate of any party in any constituency if we refrained from passing this measure today. The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, to take only printing, that costs have escalated in such a way that without some increase in expenses the presentation of a reasonable programme by any candidate to his electors would be impeded seriously. I remind hon. Members


that what is proposed is no more than a modest increase to restore the value of money to what it was in 1970.
With more mature consideration, a future Speaker's Conference will examine this matter in detail and make recommendations. This Bill merely implements the immediate wish of Mr. Speaker's Conference to see that candidates up and down the country can present their programmes adequately to their electors.

4.36 p.m.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: The Bill is designed to remove some of the more obvious anomalies which have arisen from the increase in printing costs and so on. However, there is a wider issue, which is that election messages by candidates need to be put across more effectively than in the past simply because there is much more Government involvement in the life of the nation and there are more issues to be explained.
There is the possibility that electors would have been disfranchised if they had not been given an adequate opportunity to know what their candidates were feeling. What is more, without such an increase there would have been a greater risk of this election becoming a TV election, which we should all deplore.

4.37 p.m.

Mr. Carlisle: I assure the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham) that I intended no discourtesy to him or to the House in not saying anything immediately on moving the Second Reading of the Bill. He will remember that on begging leave to introduce the Bill I explained its purpose and effect. No hon. Member appeared to want a longer explanation than that which I gave——

Mr. George Cunningham: I am afraid that I did not hear the hon. and learned Gentleman's elaborate explanation of the purpose and effect of the Bill. At that stage I was rushing out of the Chamber in order to obtain a copy of the Bill, and his speech was so long that he was concluding it when I returned.

Mr. Carlisle: I did not say that I had given an elaborate explanation. The hon.

Gentleman must not assume that a lengthy speech necessarily means greater clarity—in his speeches or anyone else's.
I say with respect to the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Leonard) that what he said about the financing of political parties was not quite the complete picture. As I understand it, the hon. Member for Hitchin (Mrs. Shirley Williams) suggested on behalf of the Opposition that this was a matter which might be added to the terms of reference of Mr. Speaker's Conference. The hon. Member for Romford is right in saying that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary did not think that it was an appropriate matter for Mr. Speaker's Conference.
To complete the picture, however, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary agreed that it was a matter which should be discussed, and he offered at that stage to meet my right hon. Friend the Lord President, the hon. Member for Hitchin and other representatives of the Opposition to discuss what would be an appropriate forum if it was the wish of the Opposition that that should be raised.

Mr. Leonard: I do not dissent from the account which the hon. and learned Gentleman has just given. But I still hold the view that this matter should have been considered by Mr. Speaker's Conference and that the effect of the Government's action is that consideration of this very important matter has been delayed beyond the end of this Parliament.

Mr. Carlisle: I accept that the Government's decision made it impossible to discuss this matter in the context of Mr. Speaker's Conference. However, an offer was made immediately to the Opposition of meeting, if they wished, to discuss what would be an appropriate forum for a matter of such major importance as the whole basis of the financing of political parties.
As I said briefly in introducing the Second Reading of the Bill—the hon. Member for Islington, South-West may feel that it was introduced inadequately—the purpose of the Bill is to give effect to the recommendation by Mr. Speaker's Conference on the maximum limit of candidates' expenses.
I have been chided, if that be the right word, by the right hon. and learned Member for West Ham, South (Sir Elwyn Jones) and other hon. Gentlemen about


the speed with which the Bill has been brought forward. As Mr. Speaker pointed out before vacating the Chair, the recommendation from the Conference arrived with the Prime Minister only yesterday. Therefore, it is difficult to see how we could have brought forward the Bill earlier than today. I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will accept that, in accordance with the tradition of the House on matters of this nature, we always await the views of Mr. Speaker's Conference before introducing legislation. The Government take the view, which I believe has the support of the majority of hon. Members on both sides of the House, that, having received this recommendation, albeit only yesterday, it is right to act on it immediately because Mr. Speaker, in his letter to the Prime Minister, said:
The Conference decided today (by 14 votes to 1) that, as a temporary measure and in the context of a possibly impending general election, the limits of expenditure per candidate should be raised".
Therefore, it clearly was the wish of Mr. Speaker's Conference, and I should think of the House, that the recommendation should be carried through before a forthcoming election. Inevitably, it means that the Bill must be carried through this House and the other place before Parliament is prorogued.

Mr. George Cunningham: Did I hear the hon. and learned Gentleman aright that the report, in effect, that he is reading to us from Mr. Speaker's Conference indicates that it was not the unanimous view of those who voted on the point that the Bill should be passed? Will he tell the House how many of the total number of Members of the Speaker's Conference voted one way or the other on that decision?

Mr. Carlisle: With respect, that is a matter for Mr. Speaker's Conference. Members of the Conference are present in the House. I read part of a letter from Mr. Speaker to the Prime Minister. This is the formal way in which the Conference's recommendation on such matters is always conveyed. I thought it right to read the appropriate terms of that letter, which I will repeat:
The Conference decided today (by 14 votes to 1) that, as a temporary measure and in the context of a possibly impending

general election, the limits of expenditure per candidate should be raised".
It then goes on to deal with the figures.
I was saying that, in the spirit of that letter of recommendation, the wish of the majority of that Conference was that its proposals should be implemented before a General Election took place. The effect of the recommendation was to raise what is the recognised flat rate of any candidate.

Mr. Cunningham: We are going through a process of legislation by an unusually fast means, and I do not apologise for interrupting the Minister in these circumstances. Will he confirm that there are nearly 30 Members of the Speaker's Conference and that therefore we are acting upon a recommendation of roughly half of those members voting one way or another with one dissentient voice against the proposal that the House is considering?

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Were there any absentee miners?

Mr. Carlisle: I will attempt to confirm the technical size of the Speaker's Conference. The hon. Gentleman, referring to voting one way or another with one dissentient, seems to imply that there were many directions in which the members were voting. The voting was 14 to one. Therefore, the Government thought it right to implement the recommendation.
The effect of the Bill is to raise from £750 to £1,075 the basic flat rate maximum expenditure per candidate. Mr. Speaker's Conference recommended the figure of £1,072, but the Government thought it appropriate to round it up to £1,075 and to raise the per capita fee or expense, which is different, for both borough and county constituencies. On top of the new figure of £1,075 there will be 6p instead of 5p as at present for every six county constituency electors or eight borough constituency electors.
The hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. James Lamond) asked whether I could spell out what that means. Taking the two examples that I have here—they are not quite the same as the example given by the hon. Gentleman, but with a rapid mathematical calculation he will be able to relate them to his example—it means that for an electorate of 65,000, which is an average electorate today, in


a borough constituency the present limit of £1,156 rises to £1,562 and in a county constituency the limit of £1,291 rises to £1,725. In effect, the increase for a county constituency is a maximum of 33·6 per cent. and for a borough constituency 35·1 per cent.
Without wishing to get involved in the various political comments that have been made about inflation and matters of that kind—I have a feeling that there will be plenty of time to do that in the next few weeks—I feel sure that no one would reasonably suggest that those percentage increases were out of line with what we know has been the increase in the price of printing, for example, during recent years and since the matter was last reviewed.

Dr. Glyn: I notice that there is no increase in the personal allowances of candidates. On a technical point, am I correct in saying that if a candidate exceeds the £100 allowed the excess would have to come out of the additional amount provided under the Bill?

Mr. Carlisle: My immediate response to my hon. Friend is "Yes, that is so." The only effect of the Bill is to raise the maximum permitted amount which may be spent during the course of the campaign. I believe that the limit on what one should be enabled to spend in promoting one's return to this House should be reasonable so that a mammoth advantage should not be extended to an extremely wealthy candidate. At the same time it should be adequate to ensure that the candidate can appropriately put his case so that people may vote knowing the issues involved.
I think that the feeling of many people—clearly it was the feeling of Mr. Speaker's Conference—was that the present limits, if not raised, would not be adequate to achieve the second part of the aim of a limitation on expenses, bearing in mind that to exceed the maximum laid down is an unlawful electoral practice.
I commend the Bill to the House. Again without wishing to get involved in the various political comments that have been made, may I say that the contribution by the hon. Member for West Ham, North was about as arrantly hypocritical as would be consistent with many other contributions made by him during this

Parliament when he had the nerve to talk about this Government having done nothing for the sick, the aged and the infirm.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I did not say that. If the hon. and learned Member will study HANSARD he will see that I said that all Governments claim that they have not time and cannot give legislative time. I went on to explain that when it suits them they can find time. I did not pass any comments about what they do or what they have not done. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will withdraw that remark.

Mr. Carlisle: If I have the wrong words, I apologise. I formed the impression that the hon. Gentleman said that we could rush the Bill through speedily to look after the expenses of Members of Parliament and had done nothing for the sick, the infirm, the elderly and the lame. I thought that that was the impression he wished to leave with the House. With my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir J. Rodgers), I believe that, whatever may be said during the election campaign, this Government have done more for the infirm, the chronically ill, the severely disabled and the elderly than any other Government for many years.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Hicks.]

Bill immediately considered in Committee.

[Mr. OSCAR MURTON in the Chair.]

Clause 1

LIMITS ON PARLIAMENTARY ELECTION EXPENSES

Question proposed, That the Clause stand part of the Bill.

4.52 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I want to protest, Mr. Murton. For three or four weeks the Government have been toying with the idea of having an election. At the last moment they bring in this Bill. In no way have we had the chance of putting forward amendments, even had we wished to do so. Before we pass Clause 1, my hon. Friends and I might well have


wanted to increase or decrease some of the amounts. We might well have wanted to present positive suggestions or amendments. But by their dictatorial attitude the Government, led by the Prime Minister, have precluded us from exercising our democratic right of putting forward amendments.
In case the Minister of State gets it wrong, let me say that I am not suggesting that the amounts are more or less, better or worse, than any other Governments have prescribed. I want to get it clearly into the Minister's head that my complaint is that, when it suits the purpose of the Government, they bring in legislation in such a way as to prevent back benchers from having their say.

Sir Robin Turton: I want the hon. Member to be absolutely clear about this matter. Mr. Speaker's Conference was considering the election when we heard that an election might be imminent and we transferred our attention to this urgent matter. The Government therefore could not possibly have brought this recommendation to the House any earlier than today because we finished our consideration of it only at our last sitting this week.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I am obliged to the right hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton). I take this opportunity of paying my tribute to the Father of the House and recording the great respect and admiration I have for him. I am sorry that he is retiring because whoever succeeds him cannot be in any way akin to him. I am sorry that he is going.
My point about time is not directed at the right hon. Gentleman or the Conference. It is twofold. First, the Government have known for three or four weeks that they might be abdicating and running away. Therefore, the Government could well have said to Mr. Speaker's Conference "We felt we might start running away today or tomorrow, or the week after, and we will ask you to bring in your report because we know we will do a bunk."

The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means: Order. I fear that the hon. Member is straying somewhat. I remind him that it would be perfectly in order to complain as he did at one time that there may be no

time for amendments to be considered, but beyond that point I fear he has got badly out of order.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I may have digressed a little, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because the Father of the House gave me an opportunity of dealing with his interjection. Nevertheless, I still think that it is relevant to the extent that if I come to adduce reasons why I think that the clause should not stand part—I accept that the reasons may be manifold—it is because I have not had even an opportunity of getting a copy of the Bill. My hon. Friend has been more fortunate in obtaining a copy, but he told me that he has not had a chance to look thoroughly at it in order to consider the possibility of framing an amendment. Surely I am in order, therefore, to say that one of the reasons I may have ideas about allowing the clause to stand part is that my hon. Friend and I may well have had an adequate amendment which we might have joined in proposing. Further, with his great knowledge and ability, the Father of the House might also have given me an opportunity to discuss with him the possibility of tabling an amendment. It is on that ground that some protest should be made before Parliament dissolves tomorrow.

Dame Joan Vickers: What does the clause mean in subparagraphs (i) and (ii) when it says:
register of electors to be used at the election (as first published)"?
What does "first published" mean? Does it relate to the "A" and "C" registers? I believe that the new register comes in on either 15th or 16th of this month.

Mr. James Lamond: I should like to ask a question about Clause 1 as well. The clause maintains the differential between expenses allowed in parliamentary elections in a county constituency and a borough constituency. The Minister was kind enough to give me examples of constituencies with 65,000 electors. I forgot the difference between the county and the borough. I think it was somewhere in the region of £2,000.

Mr. Carlisle: It means that the new maximum of a borough of that size will be £1,562 and for a county, £1,725.

Mr. Lamond: The difference between the two is still about £140. I know that the Bill narrows the differential a little, but it still maintains it. I should like an explanation why there should be a difference. I appreciate, as anyone must, that there is some travelling involved when one has a county constituency compared with a borough constituency. But the main increase in costs of an election, in my experience, has been in printing election addresses and not in a candidate travelling around various small villages. One could argue that it is cheaper to rent meeting halls in villages than in cities.
Will the Minister tell us whether there will be a further examination of this matter following the election? If so, will it be possible to look into why there should be a differential between two types of constituency?

5.0 p.m.

Mr. John Farr: I welcome what the Government are trying to do in this clause. As a representative of a county constituency, I should like to illustrate to the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. James Lamond) the sort of extra expenses that one has to face. My own county constituency is an area about 1,600 square miles with over 100 different branches. One can easily travel in a straight line diagonally from the south-west of the constituency to the north-east and cover 50 or 60 miles without reaching the constituency boundary. That is a constituency in the dense East Midlands. In a county constituency in some of the more remote parts of Britain, those figures would be even larger.
A candidate has to get to all corners of his constituency and doing so will be no cheaper in the days that lie ahead than it was at the last General Election, especially as it is forecast that by the end of this week the price of first-grade petrol will have risen to 54p a gallon. I welcome what the Bill does to help candidates meet their necessary expenses. I should have preferred a still bigger differential to allow for the large increase that county candidates will have to pay for petrol in the coming weeks.

Mr. George Cunningham: Now that there has been time to consider the Bill more thoroughly, I believe that there is a case for allowing candidates enough

expenditure to issue the necessary literature to explain their positions. As I tried to suggest earlier, there will be a particular problem if candidates find that they have completely to reset the type that they may have used on previous occasions.
If, for example, a candidate who used a typeset on his previous manifesto which said,
We utterly reject the philosophy of compulsory wage control"—

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Who said that?

Mr. Cunningham: I am quoting from a booklet humorously entitled "A Better Tomorrow", which was the Conservative Party manifesto in the 1970 General Election.
If a candidate had in his manifesto, as this one did, the following words—
We utterly reject the philosophy of compulsory wage control"—
and if now he has to present to his electorate a case for having wage control and for completely paralysing the industrial life of the country because he has it, I think he will require rather more than £1,500 to get his case over.
That is only one example.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Surely my hon. Friend is not suggesting that even if we doubled the sum to £3,000 any printer could help to explain away a deliberate lie like that.

Mr. Cunningham: I should like to agree with my hon. Friend, but throughout my short life I have been impressed by the capacity of the Conservative Party for putting over the most enormous whoppers with a straight face and sometimes getting away with it—as it did in 1970.
If, for example, in his previous literature, a candidate had said: "We will stop further nationalisation", as was said in "A Better Tomorrow" on page 7, and he now has to justify taking over Rolls-Royce and so on, he too will have a problem.
If a candidate said in his previous literature:
We will reverse the decline in building, make home ownership easier again and concentrate Government subsidies where they are most needed",
he would need a lot of literature and would have to go to a good deal of


expense—more than £1,500, I should have thought—to explain why the Department of the Environment building figures issued last week were the worst figures for the completion of houses since 1959——

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order.

Mr. Cunningham: I will not proceed with this.

The Second Deputy Chairman: No, I would rather hope that the hon. Member would not do so. The question of what a candidate prints in his election address is very much a matter for his own judgment. I am sure that many of them are very good at precis.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Can I raise a point of order on this?

The Second Deputy Chairman: Yes, of course.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I said earlier that, had there been time, my hon. Friend and I might have had the opportunity, from which we have been precluded, of increasing the amount suggested to £3,000 or £4,000, which might have given the candidate whom my hon. Friend is trying to help the opportunity of dealing with this problem. The fact that we have been precluded from doing that is sharp practice on the part of the Government.

The Second Deputy Chairman: The hon. Member is simply repeating his hon. Friend's argument.

Mr. Cunningham: As I said, Mr. Murton, I do not want to go on reading "A Better Tomorrow". That would be an abuse of the practices of the House-almost as much of an abuse as it is to try to put through an important piece of legislation such as this with no explanation of its content.

Mr. James Lamond: Surely my hon. Friend sees the flaw in his argument. If we were to increase the amount allowed for all candidates, many candidates of the Labour Party, for instance, would not need to spend that money at all, because they would have no need to redraft their manifesto. They have kept all their promises in full view and in front of the electorate and will carry their new ones

out as soon as they come into Government.

Mr. Cunningham: I can speak with some authority on that point, because my constituency, both before I became the candidate and at the last election when I was the candidate, boasted that it had either the cheapest or one of the cheapest elections in the country. The reason was that we did not have to give the electors a lot of plush literature to bamboozle them. We simply stood on the record and the people knew their candidate well enough to vote accordingly.
But I will not go into the question of what people should put in their election manifestos. That is certainly not for me. What I am saying is that if someone has stocks of past literature with some of these statements, he will be in some difficulty. I am sure that many Conservative candidates have stocks of past literature which in other circumstances they would be able to send out saying simply "This is the manifesto we fought on last time, and we still stand by these policies"—with only a brief covering note. That would be a great help to them in getting votes, because it would show that they still stood for the same policies and had done what they had promised.
But if they have in that past literature statements like this one, on page 18 of "A Better Tomorrow",
The increase in the cost of new houses and the hightest mortgage interest rates in our history have prevented thousands of young people from becoming owners of their own homes",
they will have completely to re-set the type and have a new text. They will need more than the brief covering note—and will have to spend probably much more than £1,500.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Would my hon. Friend please deal with my point? He is asking for fantastic sums of money. If all the Tories had to deny all those lies, it would cost thousands upon thousands of pounds, since they would have to change every page of that document. Every promise has been broken. The taxpayers should not be asked to pay thousands of pounds on top of the huge sums that this Government have cost them in order to deal with the lies that they told at the last election.

The Second Deputy Chairman: Order. I just wish to point out that the taxpayer is not being asked to pay under this clause.

Mr. Cunningham: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that I could go through this document—the Conservative manifesto for the last election, "A Better Tomorrow"—and find several statements on each page which have not been adhered to. But if I were to do that, this Committee stage would go on for a very long time. I will therefore rest my speech by repeating that if the Government and their candidates have in their old literature categorical statements like
We utterly reject a philosophy"—

Mr. Arthur Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Murton. With great respect, it is not often that I attempt to correct the Chair, but a moment ago I said that the taxpayers would be paying part of the expenses. I have never known the Chair to correct a statement made by an hon. Member when he makes a political point. I may or may not have been right, but with great respect, Mr. Murton, that is not the job of the Chair. The Conservative Party receives out of taxation income large donations from big public companies, and those are from taxpayers' money. It is contributed to the Tory Party. Therefore, some of this money will be used.

The Second Deputy Chairman: Perhaps I could explain to the hon. Gentleman that the point that I was attempting to draw to his attention was that the matter had no relevance to this clause.

Mr. Cunningham: It is a very valuable point all the same.
I was explaining that there will be Conservative Members—like the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel). who has recently entered the Chamber—whose old literature, such as "A Better Tomorrow", will contain categorical statements such as
We utterly reject the philosophy of compulsory wage control.'
Because that sort of statement is in their old literature, because what they are doing now is totally different from those statements, and because they have paralysed the nation's industry in order to adhere to policies which they not only did not put before the electorate at the last

General Election but which they explicitely abjured at the time of that election, they will have to throw away all the old literature and produce new literature.
In those circumstances, the proposition coming from Mr. Speaker's Conference is probably far too modest. We ought to have a differential with a factor of, perhaps, two to one, with the Conservative Party being allowed to spend twice as much—in this General Election only, as a one-off thing—because it has to produce so much new literature. We must not blame Mr. Speaker or his Conference for not initiating this proposal. It would never have occurred to Mr. Speaker that the Conservative Party could ever have got itself into a situation in which it was at one election totally opposed to the philosophy of wage control and at the next election making it almost the major plank in the issue and the whole reason for the election.
We ought to feel a measure of sympathy for those Conservative candidates who will have to stand on their heads in the coming General Election. Whatever assistance we can give them in the way of money they will certainly need in order to put over the policies for which they now stand but which they were previously totally against.

Mr. Hugh Delargy: You will probably be relieved to hear, Mr. Murton, that I shall not make a speech or ask a question. I wish to make only an exclamation.
Although there are two clauses in the Bill, it is really a one-clause Bill. As has been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis), no one saw the Bill until about an hour ago. No one could have tabled any amendments to it. A great number of Members of Parliament who are not at present in the Chamber do not know what we are talking about. This debate is rather pointless.
Very often Members of Parliament are blamed—sometimes rightly—for voting for or against something or for accepting something about which they do not know very much. We are often accused of being guided by the Whips. I doubt whether the Whips of either side know the contents of this clause.
My simple exclamation is that I consider that this discussion is pointless. The


Bill could have been introduced by some other method. I am sorry that it has been rushed in such a manner. I have not put my point at such great length as the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North, but I mean more or less the same thing.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Carlisle: If the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy) had been present during the Second Reading debate he would have heard some of his hon. Friends put matters at slightly greater length even if less lucidly than himself.
We all appreciate the inability of the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham) to draw any form of an audience outside the House, which makes him feel that it is necessary to use this clause as a means of making his political speeches in the House. I would only add that, having listened to the quality of his election speech, I am not surprised to see that his majority dropped by over 4,000 at the last General Election and was the biggest drop in the Labour majority of any of the three candidates for Islington, South-West.

Mr. Cunningham: As I have fought only one General Election in my constituency, perhaps the Minister can explain how he can draw a comparison between one election and another.

Mr. Carlisle: The hon. Member received over 4,000 fewer votes than his predecessor.

Mr. Delargy: On a point of order, Mr. Murton. During this short debate you have very wisely ruled on one or two points of order, pointing out that certain things had been said which were not relevant to the debate. May I ask whether the Minister's statement just now was relevant to the debate?

Mr. Carlisle: Further to that point of order, Mr. Murton. I do not think that it was relevant in any way.

The Second Deputy Chairman: The Minister has very kindly answered that point of order.

Dame Joan Vickers: Will my hon. and learned Friend answer the serious point which I raised?

Mr. Carlisle: My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dame Joan Vickers) asked about the meanings of the words "as first published". I understand that the effect of that phrase now is that it covers every name on the electoral register, even the names of people who are not yet entitled to vote but who are on the register because they become of age to vote during the period when the electoral register is in existence. On that register there will be the names of those who, although not entitled to vote when it comes into force on 16th February, become entitled to vote during the course of the year. The use of the words "as first published" is apparently to make it clear in assessing the total amount which can be used on the per capita side of election expenses. One takes account of names on the register, even those who have not yet become of age to vote.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The Minister has just said something which causes me some dismay. Does he mean that the words "as first published" mean that provided that the name is on the register the cash allowance can be claimed, and the person can vote even though the whole street in which he lives is in a clearance area? I shall continue at length in order to enable the Minister to ask his advisers to give him the information required, which he does not have at present.
I see now that his adviser is getting the information. Does that phrase mean that one has the right to object if one knows that Smith, Brown, Black or Blue are on the register but are not legally entitled to be on it? We shall now have a situation in which Smith, Brown, Black and Blue will not only be entitled to vote, although illegally on the register, but the candidate concerned can get an extra allowance. The Minister is now saying that we shall have a right to object.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy) might be on the register as living in Westminster Square. He would be on the register, but he would not have the right to contract out and to say that he should not be on it because he was not living there. In addition to the fact that he would have the right to vote, the candidate in the Westminster area—a Tory—would be able to get extra money to help to fight for electors who should not be on the register. Is that


the situation we are confronted with? Are we to allow them extra money? That is what Irish politics was all about. I hope the Minister has this wrong.

Mr. Carlisle: With a system where part of the payment depends on the number of electors in the constituency there must obviously also be a system under which the number of electors on which that allowance is based may be decided. I gather that that number has been taken as being the number of names to appear on the electoral register and that is the effect of the clause.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Third Reading what day?

Mr. Adam Butler: Now, Sir.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I cannot cake a point of order in the middle of putting the Bill. I am bound to put the Bill immediately without debate. I will take the point of order as soon as I have disposed of the Bill.

Mr. Lewis: You have not heard my point of order.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I cannot take it now.

Mr. Lewis: It is on the point of whether you can take it now or not.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I cannot take it until I have put the Question on the Bill.

Mr. Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I agree that normally the procedure you propose to adopt would be followed, but normally we would have the right to put down a motion that the Third Reading should not be taken. I have not had the opportunity of putting such a motion down. I agree that normally you must put the Question without debate unless there is a motion on the Order Paper. Neither I nor my hon.

Friends, however, have had the opportunity of putting down a motion and, therefore, I am being denied the right of a Third Reading debate because, correctly, you say that I cannot put down such a motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and you, again, correctly, have to put the Question. This is an abrogation of the democratic right of back benchers.
I may not even want to take part in the Third Reading debate, but I want to stand up for the rights of back benchers irrespective of whichever Government are in power. I want to protest at the shady practice adopted by the Government in denying back benchers the chance of exercising their democratic rights.

Mr. George Cunningham: Further to the point of order——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Maybe I can clear this up without any help from the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham). The relevant Standing Order is Standing Order No. 56, which says:
The question for the third reading of a public bill shall be put forthwith unless notice has been given by not less than six members of an amendment to the question or of a motion that the question be not put forthwith.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I have not had the chance.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I quite understand what the hon. Member means when he says that he has not had the chance, but we are in somewhat unusual circumstances in that I am bound to put the Question straight away without debate.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Standing Order provides that the Third Reading shall be taken without debate unless six hon. Members put their names down to a motion to the contrary. The question is what opportunity has occurred of six Members putting down their names to take advantage of the Standing Order to have a debate on the Third Reading? Are you willing now, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to take the names of six hon. Members to ask for a debate on Third Reading? This is a point of some substance, and I know that the circumstances are unusual, but when the Government are introducing legislation in these circumstances they


must consider the question of the Standing Orders.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: There is nothing now to be said which could not have been said on Second Reading. Any comments hon. Members may have could have been made a little sooner than this. We are on a procedural matter, and I am bound to carry out the Standing Orders as they are laid down.

Mr. Delargy: You have said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the circumstances are rather unusual. Will you please explain how unusual they are and why that should be?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I do not think it needs any explanation from me of why the circumstances are unusual. There can be no one left in the country who does not realise that they are unusual. I will leave it at that, and I hope that the hon. Member will accept what I say.

Mr. George Cunningham: The fact that an election may be coming along has absolutely no effect on the procedures of this House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is on the wrong beam there. This House will be dissolved tomorrow——

Mr. Delargy: It is not dissolved today.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Therefore, the Government have made a statement about the business for today and that business is being taken. There is nothing we can do to alter that.

Mr. Cunningham: I have not finished my point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was saying that obviously the imminence of an election does not affect the rules of the House. I know that it has affected today's business but it does not mean that something has been validly done if otherwise it would have been invalidly done. Will you say now whether you will accept a manuscript motion from six hon. Members that the Bill be not read a Third time? If you are not prepared to accept that the House will clearly be in a ridiculous situation because of the circumstances in which the Government can therefore bring forward a Bill which no one knew about. Hon. Members would have been obliged to put something on the Order Paper yesterday

to stop a Bill of which they knew nothing having an automatic Third Reading today.
This is a serious point and were it to be the case that the House had manifestly transgressed its rules of order it would at least be alleged outside that the measure had been improperly dealt with and it might be open to question.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Other occupants of the Chair, including Mr. Speaker, have in times past—and we know that the House is guided by precedent—agreed that when, for reasons that neither the Chair nor the Table can control, hon. Members have not had the time or opportunity of putting down either a motion or an amendment the Chair would accept a suitable motion. Will you consider this further, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Perhaps I could continue speaking while you look up the precedents.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I must try to dispose of this matter as quickly as possible.

Mr. Farr: Further to the point of of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If hon. Members were so anxious to have a debate on Third Reading, surely, as it has been two hours since the Bill was introduced, they have had ample time to get six names on a piece of paper and submit them to the Chair for consideration. The only reason that Labour Members are trying to prolong the proceedings is that they did not think of that course of action before.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I do not need any help from anybody about this. Also I do not need any more points of order. I am sorry but I cannot oblige either hon. Member, much as I should like to do so. If I had the power under Standing Orders to use discretion this is just the sort of case where I should like the chance to use it, but I cannot use it. I am absolutely precluded from that, and I must put the Question straight away.

Mr. Delargy: For the first time since you have occupied the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you replied to me rather abruptly. You seemed to call upon my head a certain amount of ridicule by telling me that I should know why the


situation was unusual, and that if I did not the rest of the nation did. My sole point was that the House had not yet been dissolved. It is still in session and we should obey our rules of procedure now, as we always have done in the past.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I take the opportunity immediately to apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I had no desire to ridicule him. I was trying to add some lightness to the debate, which was perhaps becoming a little heavy. Now I must put the Question.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I must insist as a matter of principle that I and five other hon. Members have the right to oppose Third Reading, provided we submit our motion in time and have the approval of the Chair. I have been refused the right which is given to me by Standing Orders. The Chair has the right to oppose my claim, if I am not acting in accordance with the Standing Orders. I shall not agree to Third Reading unless the matter is cleared up, so that we have the right precedent for the future. If you said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you would accept a manuscript motion I should be willing to accept that statement and not submit it. But I want the principle established that you would say "Yes", provided I was willing to act in accordance with the Standing Order and give notice. That would suit me.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I cannot help the hon. Gentleman. He could have helped himself earlier if he had taken the opportunity of putting down a motion before I came to Third Reading. That was not done. I was in the act of calling the Bill for Third Reading when the hon. Gentleman sought to raise a point of order which I told him I could not take. I have tried to be as lenient as I could be with the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.]

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Conservative Members should shut up.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We must try to be as good tempered as we can be and finish our work here in a good spirit. I try only to carry out the rules

of the House as I understand them. I ask the hon. Gentleman to accept—

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Mr. Arthur Lewis rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman knows well enough that when I have finished what I am saying I shall call him. He must not interrupt me. It is quite out of character and is something which is not done in the House.
I cannot take the motion which the hon. Gentleman seeks to move because I am expressly precluded from doing so. Such a motion must be put down before we come to Third Reading. I judged that we had arrived at Third Reading, so there is nothing the hon. Gentleman or any other hon. Member can do, not having put down a blocking motion by then.
I hope that I make myself quite clear to the hon. Gentleman and that he will not pursue the matter further, because I should like to think, after being with him for many years in the House, that he and I could part on the best of terms.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I agree unreservedly with your last point, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I cannot agree with the first. Before you put the Question, I immediately rose. I could not have submitted the blocking motion, because at that time the Report stage had not been completed. I did not know until the Committee stage was ended whether any manuscript amendment was proposed and whether the Chair would accept it. I did not know until the Report stage whether amendments which might have been moved and accepted in Committee were agreed on Report, so I had to wait until the Report stage. When you asked "Third Reading, what day?" and were told "Now", I immediately rose. I complied with every part of the Standing Order and asked for permission, before you put the Question, to submit a manuscript blocking motion. I still claim that I am in order, and I am sorry that I cannot accept your ruling.

Mr. George Cunningham: On a point of order. I should like to understand what are apparently the rules of the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: ; If the hon. Gentleman will sit down, I shall tell him


exactly. The rules are that a blocking motion must be on the Order Paper or, in a case such as the present, when we have had to change the business of the day, in the hands of the Chair before the moment arrives to put the Question. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not keep the House unduly now.

Mr. Houghton: I am trying not to be a nuisance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but under what authority is the Question, "That the Bill be now read the Third time" being put immediately after Report? The Bill was reported to you unamended by the Chairman of the Committee. You then asked "Third Reading, what day?" and a voice said "Now". What authority lies behind that call of "Now"? Has the House agreed to take the Third Reading immediately after the Committee stage? It would be quicker to defer Third Reading for an hour and let us get on with another Bill while the motion is put down, a motion which would not in fact block Third Reading.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I cannot accept that suggestion. The position is quite clear. We are working under Standing Order No. 56. The procedure I went through is the normal procedure that we go through on all Bills. I am sorry that I cannot accede to the request of the hon. Members for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis) and Islington, South-West (Mr. George Cunningham). I hope that I have explained thoroughly why I cannot do so. I am bound by the Standing Order. Now that the hon. Members have had their say, I hope they will allow me to put the Question.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 56 (Third Reading):—

The House proceeded to a Division;—Mr. Michael Jopling and Mr. Adam Butler were appointed tellers for the Ayes but no Member being willing to act as Teller for the Noes, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER declared that the Ayes had it.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL

Considered in Committee; reported, without amendment.

Motion made, and Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 56 (Third Reading), and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Adam Butler.]

GOVERNMENT SCIENTISTS (PAY)

5.43 p.m.

Mr. Airey Neave: I hope that it will be in order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I offer my good wishes to you on behalf of all hon. Members and say how much we have valued your distinguished service in the Chair over so many years. We wish you every success in future.
I am glad that you are in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the last Adjournment debate of this Parliament. I am grateful that the House has completed its business in time for me to speak a great deal longer than would have been possible on a more normal occasion.
I wish to raise a subject which is of the utmost importance to the whole scientific world and to our research and development programme—namely, the morale of Government scientists, which at present is extremely low. The House will be well aware that in my constituency are the great laboratories of Harwell, Culham, which is just outside my constituency but where many of my constituents work, and the Rutherford Laboratory. The standard of living of Government scientists employed in these centres and a great many others has been hard hit not only by inflation, about which we shall hear a lot in the coming weeks, but by the policies of the Civil Service Department.
I shall give a few illustrations of what I mean by cuts in the standard of living of Government scientists. The salaries which I shall quote are scale maxima. I am referring to the period from 1963 until the present time. The Rutherford Laboratory, which is a part of the Science Research Council and is in my constituency, is one of the most important science and research laboratories. A principal


scientific officer of the main key grade, which initiates and controls assembly work, had in 1963 a salary maximum of £2,810. In 1973 the salary maximum was £4,575, hence a 63 per cent. increase in 10 years. However, the price index change over the past 10 years has been an increase of 78 per cent.
Those figures illustrate a fall in living standards equivalent to 8 per cent. over 10 years and an even greater fall over any other shorter time scale. That is an unprecedented situation. I can find no other profession or occupation which has suffered in the same way during the past 10 years.
My second illustration concerns the senior scientific officers whom we used to call senior experimental officers. It is a second key grade. Their work carries responsibilities for the whole range of scientific work. In 1963 the salary maximum for such officers, men and women, was £2,179. In 1973 it was £3,640. The salary change in 10 years has been 67 per cent. but the price index change has been 78 per cent. Hence there has been a fall in their standard of living of 6 per cent. Again, I do not know of any other occupation which has been suffering so badly, although there may be those which come close to it.
The Civil Service Department is entirely to blame for the situation. It has been following mistaken policies regarding the determination of scientists' pay in the Civil Service. The scientists have been having a very bad time. In addition, British research and development and technology have been threatened by the Central Electricity Generating Board. There is a huge nuclear reactor programme involving American light water reactors upon which the Select Committee on Science and Technology has recently reported. I am glad to say that many of the recommendations of the Committee, of which I am chairman, seem to have found favour in the House. I take this opportunity of saying that were the CEGB programme to be accepted by any incoming Government after the General Election it would do tremendous damage to British research and development and to the morale of Government scientists.
I do not take a jingoistic view about reactors. The Select Committee considered

the matter from a technical, economic and operational rather than from a chauvinist point of view. I welcome the presence in Britain of the Canadian Ministers—namely, the Federal Minister of Energy and the Ontario Minister of Energy. I hope that a technology agreement can be reached on the CANDU reactor which will relate to the steam generating heavy water reactor which we are developing. A know-how agreement would be valuable.
I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to tell his noble Friend the Secretary of State for Energy that no decision should be made until the House meets again. The House was, of course, to have a debate about the subject next week. I think that all hon. Members feel sufficiently strongly about the matter to consider that we should not be faced with any kind of fait accompli. I ask my hon. Friend to carry that view to my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Energy.

Mrs. Renée Short: We will change it.

Mr. Neave: I am sure that the hon. Lady does not want to buy American reactors any more than I do.

Mrs. Short: The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood. If a decision is made and it is the wrong one, we will change it.

Mr. Neave: I return to the question of Government scientists. I have had perhaps 500 letters in the last week. I have had no time to open a great many of them, but those I have opened describe the financial difficulties of many creative and brilliant people. It is a most disturbing situation for the country to find itself in at a time when we specially need their services in the development of new energy resources.
I should like to know what the Government's attitude is towards scientists. I have been in this House for a long time, and I have never been satisfied with the attitude of any Government to scientists. By permitting this gap to arise between the pay rates of administrative grades and those of the scientific grades, the Government have given rise to a feeling that they are anti-science, and in particular that the administrative grades


of the Civil Service do not favour scientists at all in having permitted these discrepancies to continue.
The pay of the Science Group in the Civil Service has been referred to the Pay Board. I should therefore say something about the previous history since I, with other hon. Members from both sides of the House, played some part in the controversy.
For 24 years, between 1947 and 1971, the pay of Government scientists was based on what were described as internal relativities. The pay of the administrative, technological and professional grades was related to the pay of Government scientists. What has gone wrong, in that Government scientists find themselves now in such an unhappy situation, is; the abandonment of that principle. This was the big mistake that the Civil Service Department made from 1969 onwards. The Institution of Professional Civil Servants, which has always played a great rôle in this matter and represents many of my constituents and the constituents of other hon. Members present, had its representations refused by the CSD on this point.
The CSD insisted on a disastrous—that is the only word I can appropriately use—pay research system, with the results that have now arisen with such evil consequences for the scientific world. The claim at the time in 1971 was referred to the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal. It was an improvement on the CSD offer, but it never solved the basic difference—that scientists' pay in the Government service should be determined by internal relativities and not by a relationship to outside organisations.
This was the case put by the IPCS. It said that a substantial difference in scale in organisation existed between the employment of scientists in Government service and the employment of scientists in outside organisations, especially in industry. I work in a firm which employs scientists, and I confirm much of what the IPCS has said.
In industry the emphasis is on applied research. Industry does very little basic research, whereas in the Government service the scientists do both basic and applied research. Above all, they undertake project management, particularly in

the Ministry of Defence. There is, therefore, a clear distinction between the sort of work scientists do in industry and other organisations and the work which scientists do in the Civil Service. Trying to establish a fair comparison through pay research on such a basis was not successful and led to the present crisis.
Another very substantial difference is that in the Civil Service the age groupings of scientists are quite different from those in industry. In industry, for example, the largest concentration of scientists in research and development is in the 26 to 30 age group. They do not continue, as scientists do in the Civil Service, much beyond the 35 to 40 age group in such work but go into management, administrative jobs and so on. There is a distinction between the two types of occupation. In the Civil Service the largest concentration of scientists in research and development is in the age band 41 to 45.
The pay research unit in 1971 was, therefore, pursuing entirely false comparisons which could not succeed and could not usefully be made. It was the abandonment of the relativity between scientists in Civil Service and those employed in the administrative, professional and technological grades that caused the present disastrous dispute, which has been going on since 1971. As no solution seems to be in sight, I thought it essential to raise the matter.
The CSD has stuck firmly to its point about comparisons, despite very strong pressure from hon. Members, some of whom are present in the Chamber. I was aided by the late Sir Harry Legge-Bourke in going to see my noble Friend Lord Jellicoe and then my noble Friend Lord Windlesham, the present Lord Privy Seal. We have warned Ministers time and again that a proper solution could not be found unless they abandoned their mistaken policies of 1971.
What the Civil Service Department should have been discussing was the gap, growing all the time because of inflation, between the pay of scientists in Government service and the groups in the administrative, professional and technological grades. I ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary whether he feels that there has been prejudice at work


against the scientists within the Civil Service itself. I hope that this is not true of the administrators. Yet how can the Department have allowed a gap of nearly 25 per cent. to have arisen after these years of dispute? In the circumstances, I am entitled to ask whether any prejudice exists.

Mr. Toby Jessel: My hon. Friend has spoken of declining morale among scientists in the Civil Service. Is he aware that last week at the Natural Physical Laboratory at Teddington, in my constituency, 400 scientists stopped work, held a meeting and went home because they felt so indignant about this matter? This is the first time that such a thing has happened in the history of the service. Does it not show the extent of the feeling and the urgency and seriousness with which we should expect the Minister for the Civil Service to treat the matter?

Mr. Neave: I thank my hon. Friend very much. He was right to refer to the situation at the NPL. Unless my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary can say something effective tonight, the situation will recur elsewhere. There will be protest actions in many places. Scientists are not militant people. They are very reasonable. All the letters I have read from them are couched in moderate terms. The last thing they want to do is to be involved in industrial action. They want to get on with their work.
The effect of the policy followed by the CSD meant that, after the review award in January 1971, those in the scientific officer and assistant scientific officer grades were already 7 to 8 per cent. behind those in the administrative officer grades. This has grown to an average of 25 per cent. It cannot be allowed to continue.
Throughout 1972 the Civil Service Department was in dispute and an independent committee was suggested. This was overtaken by the Government's counter-inflation policy. When I have spoken from time to time with the Civil Service Department it has given me the impression that what we are talking about is the result of the Government's counter-inflation policy. This situation existed long before the prices and incomes code was introduced. The question of

whether scientists in the Civil Service should be on a par with those in administrative grades had nothing to do with the code.
The Institution of Professional Civil Servants continued to press for new methods of determination and the reference to the Pay Board was made last year. The choice remains between pay research and internal relativities. We cannot criticise the Pay Board. It received the reference only in October 1973. This is a complicated matter. The failure to reach a solution was the responsibility of the other bodies, principally the CSD, for following what I believe to be a mistaken policy.
The 1973 substantive review was deferred by the standstill and stage 2. Meanwhile the standard of living of scientists in my constituency and elsewhere in Government service continued to fall. Between 1st January 1971 and 1st January 1973, when the substantive review was due, it fell between 18 per cent. to 19 per cent. behind the weekly wages index. It was estimated that real cuts in living standards were between 8 per cent. to 9 per cent. Obviously there will be a serious sense of bitterness and unfairness if this sort of thing is allowed to continue.
The Government are the biggest employer of this type of scientist. They should act as a reasonable employer. I do not believe that they have done so. My hon. Friend must tell us that they intend to do so in future. I need hardly remind the House, since we have been reminded of them from the Labour benches, of certain melancholy facts about the increase in retail prices. They rose by 27·1 per cent. between January 1971 and November 1973. Wages rose by the larger amount of 39·9 per cent. in the same period. On the other hand, look what happened to the scientists.
Between 1st January 1971 and 1st January 1974 a principal scientific officer now earning £4,895 has received an increase of only 19 per cent. compared with the overall wage increase of 39 per cent. He was well behind in the race. A senior scientific officer earning £3,895 today has received an increase over the period since 1971 of 19·7 per cent. A higher scientific officer earning £2854 today has received an increase of 21·4 per cent., while a scientific officer earning


£2,329 today has received an increase of 22·6 per cent. and an assistant scientific officer earning £1,729 today has had an increase of 23·9 per cent.
We have therefore clear evidence that all these persons employed by the Government in various scientific grades received increases well behind those which the rest of the working community received. This is the reason for their sense of frustration and their feeling that, unless they become militant and take some protest action in the laboratories, which they do not wish to do, they will not get anywhere with my hon. Friend's Department.
Let me give a few illustrations of what this means to individuals. I will not quote names. I have had letters from practically every scientific establishment in the country complaining that the administrative officer grade is so much ahead of other scientific grades. One person writes:
By comparison, for example, with salaries in the administrative Civil Service, equivalent scientific grades are up to 30 per cent. underpaid. Take my own grade as an example. In January 1970 this was equivalent to that for an administrative principal and attracted the same salary. Now, at the top of the scale, there is a difference of close on £1,000 a year.
This is an enormous discrepancy. My correspondent continued:
Such unfavourable comparisons obtain throughout all the lower rates with the result that morale is at an all-time low and recruitment thin.
If we are to get the best brains into science, we will not do it in this way. A number of people have written to say that they will be leaving the scientific world on that account.
Another person writes:
I am a senior scientific officer aged 45 employed at the UKAEA at Harwell on a salary of £3,800 per annum, top of the scale. My position is head of market intelligence, in charge of seven staff supplying market information in support of our commercial programmes, which are currently bringing in an income of over £5 million per annum. During the past three years I have seen my executive juniors who are employed in a secondary support rôle to scientists at Harwell outstrip me, both in earnings and standard of living. My 23-year-old godson is now employed at Harwell as a junior graduate engineer on a salary approximately equivalent to my own.
That is the position in which people who have spent their lives in science are finding themselves. They are being outstripped

by supporting staff doing administrative jobs. These people are important to the running of the laboratory. This produces an absurd situation. Even in the private office of the Lord Privy Seal the scientists employed there is receiving considerably less than the other officials. Surely my hon. Friend and my noble Friend cannot permit this situation to continue any longer. They must find a means of ending it.
I have received a letter from someone in the computing group at Culham. He says:
Since I started working at Culham my real standard of living has steadily declined, especially over the past two years. My mortgage increased by 37½ per cent. from September 1972 to September 1973 and it is now quite apparent that unless I get a substantial rise in salary very soon I shall have to sell my house because I can no longer afford it. While I realise that part of the current inflation is caused by external factors this by no means tell the whole story. At least some of the blame must be laid at the door of the Government.
He goes on to explain the position and says:
It is now the case that people working in Culham who are designated administrators are earning £1,000 a year more than I, despite the fact that my work is 80 per cent. administrative. This situation not only makes no sense but it is damaging in the extreme for science today and for the future of the country in my view in its great research projects.
Although I have had more time than I expected to have tonight, and I have received many more letters, some of them very painful ones, from young scientists who regret having chosen science at all, I will not take up much more time because I am aware that others wish to speak.
This is a most melancholy state of affairs. I have always supported the claims of scientists in this House and I feel very unhappy about the current position. We are penalising some of the most creative and unselfish people in the country who have never complained until now and who have not become militant despite these big discrepancies. At last they are driven by these frustrations to protest to the House. We need these people for the big programmes of research that are required to make our country prosperous.
On 17th January 1974 the General Secretary of the IPCS, Mr. McCall, wrote to the Civil Service Department saying that scientists were already suffering


these severe cuts in their standard of living and that no reasonable employer could expect the scientists to wait for a further period before their pay was improved. He went on to say:
The Lord Privy Seal has stated that there can be no doubt it is in our common interest to find a solution to these difficulties as quickly as possible".
Since 1971 I have been told that by two Lords Privy Seal——

Mr. George Machin: Does the hon. Gentleman feel that this can be dealt with by the Government as employer making the necessary adjustments, or by the Pay Board through its relativities report?

Mr. Neave: Probably by the latter, but the Government have to consider the interim claim put in by the IPCS.
My hon. Friend the Minister will probably tell the House that the Government are bound by the decision of the Pay Board, but there has been a delay in the Pay Board's report which is not now expected to be made as early as was hoped. I was in touch yesterday with the Pay Board and I received a promise that the report would be hurried up. The Government will be bound by the Pay Board's decision, but in the meantime Mr. McCall has put in an interim claim.
In view of the unusual circumstances in which the House meets today, I suggest to my hon. Friend that he should arrange straight away to sit down with the Pay Board and the IPCS to talk about this interim claim. Otherwise by the time the election is over the gap which is now 25 per cent. will have become even wider, more people will have suffered because of it and some may have left the scientific world, with great loss to the country. My hon. Friend must reassure these men and women. They are responsible, moderate people who do not like militancy or protest action, but that might come, with great harm to scientific interests, if the Minister cannot give that reassurance.
I hope that the Minister will consider all I have said and what other hon. Members will say in support of my case. The Government will no doubt be bound by the Pay Board's report, but they will still have to resolve the main disagreement that in future the status of scientists within the Civil Service should be a much

better one. Any future Government after the election must have a definite policy of parity between the administrative and scientific grades, otherwise we shall never recruit the best young people either into the scientific Civil Service or elsewhere. The Civil Service Department will have to change its policy, and the House should press it to do so.

6.14 p.m.

Mrs. Renée Short: I am glad to have the opportunity to follow the powerful case made out by the hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave). We all respect his interest in scientific matters, and he has done a great service in bringing forward this matter.
I agree with everything that was said by the hon. Gentleman. The general public do not understand the difficulties that scientific civil servants have had to endure for so many years. This is not recent; it is a matter of long-standing dispute amongst scientific civil servants. Civil servants are divided into three grades, the administrative, executive and clerical grades, the professional and technical grades, and the scientists. The Pay Research Unit, which reviews Civil Service salaries, on 1st January 1973 could have awarded an increase in pay to the scientific Civil Service, but did not do so because of Government policy at the time. The administrative, executive and clerical grades had an anomaly award in November 1973 which was not backdated but was paid in November 1973. The professional and technical grades had a rise in January of this year.
The scientific grades from senior principal scientific officer upwards are tied to the administrative grades, which had a rise in November 1973. The scientific grades from principal scientific officer downwards did not get that increase. They feel bitter about it because they are having to meet all the increases in the cost of living that have been brought about largely by the Government's policies.
In the administrative grade the principal is the equivalent of the principal scientific officer. It might be useful to compare the equivalent grades of administrative officers and scientific officers to see the differences in the salary at the beginning and end of the grade.


The comparison shows the mean way in which we treat our scientists. There is at least a difference of from 25 per cent. to 30 per cent. between the salaries of administrative officers and those of scientific officers below senior principal scientific officer. The scientists are always behind the administrative officers.
The difference between the principal scientific officer and the principal in the administrative grade is £900 per annum. In addition, the principal scientific officer's promotion prospects are much smaller and he takes much longer to acquire his qualifications than does the administrative officer. The principal scientific officer reaches his grade at the age of 34 or thereabouts, but the principal gets there at 28 or even younger so that he is able to earn a higher salary for a longer period.
There is a gap between the bottom of the senior principal scientific officer grade and the top of the principal scientific officer grade, which stands at £1,400 per annum. If an officer is promoted to senior principal scientific officer from the top of the grade below, his increase amounts to one-third of his existing salary and he gets that in one go. There is no justice in that fantastic situation.
There are a large number of posts in the Civil Service that can be filled, on the one hand, by administrative, executive or clerical grades or, on the other hand, by scientific grades. The salary for the man who gets the job depends on the entirely arbitrary decision whether he is a scientist. If he is a scientist and fills the job, he gets less than the man who is in the administrative grade, even though the job is precisely the same and the job specification and the requirements which the officer has to meet are exactly the same. This situation is grossly unfair. It is no wonder that the Institution of Professional Civil Servants is so concerned about the position.
The latest pay award of 7 per cent., announced only a few days ago, has not changed the differentials in salary between the scientific and the administrative grades. I should like to give the Parliamentary Secretary some comparable salaries. The lower range executive officer at age 18 starts at £1,360 and rises to £2,782. The comparable scientific grade is the scientific officer, but he does not enter the grade at 18 because he has

to take his degree and he is 21 when he enters the service. He begins at £1,410 a year and rises to £2,329. The next administrative grade is the higher executive officer. He starts at £2,953 and rises to £3,534. The comparable scientific grade is the higher scientific officer, who starts at £2,221, which is over £700 less, and rises to only £2,854—well below the top of the administrative scale, which is £3,534.
The senior executive officer starts at £3,756 and rises to £4,542, whereas the senior scientific officer starts at £2,798—almost £1,000 below—and rises to £3,895. The principal starts at £4,360 and rises to £5,913, and the principal scientific officer starts at £3,715 and rises to £4,895, which is over £1,000 below. It is interesting to see where the Member of Parliament fits into the scale which I have just read out. The senior principal scientific officer, on the other hand, who has had a maximum increase of £350 under the 7 per cent. increase, now receives a salary of £6,300, which is an enormous increase over the principal scientific officer grade. If the principal scientific officer is promoted to the next grade, he gets over 30 per cent. of his original salary in one fell swoop.
The difficulty is that the Pay Board said that it could not make up its mind how to fix the salaries of scientific staff. This is the indication I have had, but the Pay Board should be told that the delay has continued for long enough and that these anomalies should be removed.
As for salary-fixing within the Civil Service, the salaries are fixed not by the scientific staff but by the administrative staff—and the administrators make sure that they get their increases regularly year after year without difficulty; they also make sure that the scientific grade salaries are kept below the administrative grade salaries. This situation surely cannot be tolerated. It is grossly unfair, and it affects recruitment into the scientific Civil Service. The Government are the largest employers of scientists in the country and give interesting and stimulating careers to our scientists, but we should at least see that they are properly recompensed.
Our senior scientists have to carry out a great deal of negotiations with administrators in industry and those who work in research departments, and also take


part in high-level discussions with their opposite numbers in industry, but, compared with their colleagues, they are at a considerable disadvantage. Furthermore, they are frequently very much better qualified academically than are the people in industry with whom they have to negotiate. But the return they get is far below that given in industry. This is not a situation which any reasonable Government should tolerate. Therefore, it is not surprising that there has been a walk-out at the National Physical Laboratory, or demonstrations at the National Engineering Laboratory and the Building Research Station. There have also been at many research institutes sit-ins, walk-outs and meetings held in Government time. However, for some reason those events have not been newsworthy and, so far as I know, have not been reported in the Press. But they have happened and are an indication of the serious unrest that exists in the scientific Civil Service.
The Minister can perhaps claim some credit for the fact that the Government have successfully stimulated the scientists in their employment to stand alongside the consultants in the hospital service, the ambulance men, the hospital ancillary workers, the power workers, the miners—workers who have either taken industrial action or are about to do so. They have united a very wide cross-section of people across the board, because of the shabby way in which they have been treated, in taking action against the Government. The Government, by their pay policy and by the way in which the Pay Board is encouraged to deal with legitimate claims, are turning all moderate people into militants. I am referring to claims by people who have been silent up to now and who do not exert the normal pressures which other staff in industry and in some of the professions tend to exert.
I hope that the Minister will tell the Pay Board to get on with the job. I hope that he will say that immediately there should be some interim award and that forthwith there will be a proper review of the salaries paid to the scientific Civil Service at all levels to bring them completely into line with comparable administrative grades. This is the only way in which any kind of equity

can be established to halt the decline in recruitment into the scientific Civil Service. This problem is a serious side result of the Government's policies.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. John Astor: I wish to intervene briefly, but I hope as forcefully as possible, to support my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) since I, too, have a substantial number of scientists living in my constituency and working in Government establishments in Berkshire and the immediate neighbourhood.
The facts and figures have already been clearly explained by my hon. Friend, and the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) elaborated on them and gave further examples. I hope that many of the factual figures will already be known to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary of the Civil Service Department.
I wish to stress one aspect of this subject. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will make a great mistake if he seeks to under-estimate the strength of feeling among Government scientific officers. They are a responsible section of the community and only reluctantly have they decided to resort to industrial action. They would not have taken such a decision unless they regarded it as a last resort. I have had the opportunity to talk to a number of my constituents and I have received many letters on this topic. There is undoubtedly a great feeling of disillusionment and anger and in many cases this has turned into bitterness. This is having a bad effect on the establishments. I am repeatedly told that morale has never been lower. The standard of work is suffering from the feeling of frustration and injustice and there is also difficulty in recruiting the best type of graduate into the service.
All this will have a long-term effect on the scientific service unless the Parliamentary Secretary is able to take quicker action. No one could deny, on the figures already outlined, that the scientific civil servants, at least up to PSO grade, are due for a pay award. It may be some time before the Pay Board can report and full negotiations can take place under whatever scheme is arrived at. I urge the Parliamentary Secretary to consider making an interim award without delay


and without prejudice to any final negotiations. This is almost the only way open to him at present to correct the feeling of injustice and restore the morale of the service, and I hope that he will take immediate steps so to do.

6.31 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Woodhouse: My hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) has put the case so fully and eloquently that there is little to be added. What needed to be added has been forcefully said by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Astor).
Neverthless I wish to add a few words because, although there is probably a greater number of Government scientific workers employed in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon, there are a great many living in my constituency. I receive letters from them, similar to other letters which have been quoted in the debate.
There is a curious historical reason for the connection between Harwell and Oxford. When the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Establishment was being set up soon after the war, great nervousness was expressed in the University of Oxford about having this danger-out establishment on its doorstep. Apparently many dons were under the misapprehension that radioactive fall-out would flood all over the neighbouring counties. When it was explained to them that many high-grade scientists would work at Harwell and would want the proximity of an academic community, for obvious scientific reasons, the dons at Oxford, I am told, said "Could not the establishment be put near Cambridge?"
The Atomic Energy Authority nevertheless persisted, and that is why I, too, have a constituency interest in the matter. I have received many letters from Government scientists who live in Oxford. I shall quote one letter, which I received this morning from an employee of the UKAEA. He writes:
The Civil Service scientific staff and other Government scientists have been very badly treated in terms of pay increases; our standard of living has been viciously eroded over the last three years. Even the Civil Service Department has admitted to the Pay Board that they are concerned about wastage and difficulty in recruitment.

Scientists have been extremely patient and have conceded many points on timescales to allow genuine study of the whole basis of pay settlements. They are now growing desperate. I have never experienced such bitterness and desperation among the lowly-paid junior members.
No doubt that letter, or the spirit of it, can be reproduced many times in the correspondence which hon. Members on both sides, as well as myself, receive. That is why I wish with all the emphasis at my command to support the arguments of my hon. Friend. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to assure us that in the next Parliament no Member of Parliament will receive any such letters again.

6.35 p.m.

Mr. Michael Hamilton: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) on his good fortune in arranging this debate, particularly on a day when he is not restricted to a total of 30 minutes. This enables many other hon. Members to speak.
In Salisbury, in my constituency, there are several establishments—Porton, which was visited recently by a Select Committee which included the late Sir Harry Legge-Bourke, and Boscombe Down, which many hon. Members will know is an advanced Farnborough. Many scientists work at these establishments. I have talked to them and been impressed by their remarkable restraint and moderation. I have studied the history of their remuneration and I am sorry to say that the bulk of the delays have fallen during the time of the present administration.
I sympathise with the feelings of these scientists and the treatment they have received. I hope that we shall have a reassurance this evening that no more time will be wasted and that matters will now be put right.

6.37 p.m.

Mr. David Mitchell: I expected that this debate would take place shortly after 10 o'clock. I was in a Committee, and it was only by chance that I realised that the debate had started. Therefore, my notes, containing statistics with which I intended to blind the Minister and your good self, Mr. Speaker, are not with me at the moment.
I have been profoundly impressed by the case presented by the scientists in


my constituency, where, in parts of Basingstoke and in Tadley, Pamber, Ash-ford Hill, Kingsclere and Mortimer, a considerable number live, and work for the AWRE. Their case is wholly reasonable. I understand that some of my colleagues have already made much of the statistical case, and I am sorry that I was not present at that time.
My point is twofold. First, the matter is now with the Pay Board, and I have written to the Chairman of the Pay Board about it. I am given to understand that there are very important detailed problems which arise because of the way the difference of opinion has built up over a period of time.
There are questions about whether the Pay Research Unit did its job fairly in regard to the scientists. The Pay Research Unit compared the pay of career structure scientists employed at the AWRE and in other sections of the Government service with those employed in private industry, but in private industry after a man reaches 32 years of age or thereabouts he ceases to be classed as a scientist and is classed instead as an administrator, a manager or in some other category.
In effect, therefore, the pay research unit compared the pay of Civil Service career scientists throughout the whole of their working life with the pay of others up to the age of 32 or thereabouts. That cannot be a fair comparison. It seems to me, therefore, that there is a strong case for a thorough inquiry.
If there is to be a thorough inquiry, however, there will be delay. If the Pay Board is to look into many other problems, some of them perhaps even more pressing, which people would like to refer to it, a considerable period will elapse before that thorough analysis of the problem is completed.
In these circumstances, I asked the Chairman of the Pay Board whether he could make an interim award. After all, the men about whom we are concerned are moderates, the very sort of people whom we should be encouraging. There is to be a General Election, in which the prime issue will be about whether militancy or moderation should be the guiding light in our economic affairs. Therefore, if there is to be a delay in dealing with the justifiable case which

this body of moderate men have, it is essential that they be given an interim pay award.
I am assured by the Chairman of the Pay Board that that cannot be done by the board. It can be done by the Minister. I shall, therefore, delay matters no further so that the Minister may give us some encouraging news. If he does not, he will find confronting him, when the House next assembles, some very incensed Members of Parliament who are thoroughly convinced of the justice of the cause of the scientists employed in the Government service.

6.41 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Warren: I regret that I had to leave the Chamber for a Committee so that I did not hear all the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave).
It is essential that the scientists are looked after by the Government in a way in which they cannot look after themselves, because the need is for continuity in their structure of employment and this the Government have not so far given to them. All that the Government assure them of is employment but without ensuring continuity of comparison with their colleagues in private industry with whom they have to deal, or continuity of comparison not only with private industry in this country but with those with whom they have to deal overseas both in industry and in other employments who receive a much better deal from their Governments.
I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon on one point. He said that scientists in Government employment have to look after project management whereas those in industry do not necessarily have the same responsibility. In my experience I have found that responsibility equates between private industry and the Government service, and this makes it all the harder on Government scientists who find that their responsibilities are not recognised as they are in private industry. Moreover, as my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. David Mitchell) explained, comparisons taken beyond about 32 years of age mean that Government scientists, as they get older, suffer particular inequalities.
The Government are to be commended for much that they have done in offering


scientists the sort of continuity of employment in their specialist careers which private industry fails to offer. Often in private industry one sees at work the famous "Peter" principle that everybody shall be promoted to the level of his own incompetence, and many scientists are made administrators and managers without any hope of their being as good in the tasks to which they are promoted in private industry as their colleagues would be in the Government service.
It cannot be over-emphasised that people who choose a specialist career in science at an early age cannot change to some other career at a later time. One must safeguard and look after these people, and this only their employer can do. Their employer, the Government, must set the prime example, for in this sense the Government are the prime employer of the scientific and technical capability of our nation.
I draw attention also to the famous customer-contractor principle which the Government have introduced. The Government are the customer, and they have to set an example to those who are their contractors. In this relationship they should set, above all, an example in the way they employ those who support them in their service.

5.45 p.m.

Sir David Renton: Not for the first time during the many years he has been in the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) has put us all in his debt for his parliamentary initiative. Today, again, he has done a public service by raising this matter.
My mind goes back to the late 1960s, in the days of the Labour Government, when we were all worried about the brain drain, especially of scientists. Thanks to an improvement in direct taxation and to various other factors, that brain drain has to a considerable extent declined under the present Government. But I find that some Civil Service scientific officers in my constituency are worried about the long delay in ensuring that they receive the emoluments to which their skill and special training entitle them.
I refer in particular to those who work at the Natural Environment Research Council at Monks Wood, at the Agricultural Poulty Research Station at Houghton,

and at various Royal Air Force establishments, of which there are several in my constituency. They have all put it to me that, although the Government have undoubtedly treated them fairly in certain basic matters, the long delay in reaching various decisions is causing them great frustration.
These scientists have asked me to urge that the Civil Service Department should approach the Pay Board and ask for an early decision on the anomaly issue which the Pay Board has to decide, and which, I understand, only the Pay Board can decide.
I hope that, in coming to that decision, the Pay Board will bear in mind what was said in the Fulton Report about the relative position of scientific officers in the Civil Service as compared with those in the administrative and executive grades. Fulton suggested that, in order to attract the right type of officers and to get the best out of them, there should be an understood degree of comparability between the scientific grades and the administrative grades. That is what we want to see. That is what we want an early decision on.
When I saw representatives of the civil servants only a week ago, I said to them "If you are trying to breach stage 3 of the prices and incomes policy, you will, I am afraid, get no sympathy from me". But they convinced me that what they were asking for was in no way a breach of stage 3. It is all within the statutory incomes policy. But there has been the terrible delay to which reference has already been made, and I hope that we shall hear from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary that such delays will be quickly overcome.
I realise that this is not the best moment for my hon. Friend to make weighty pronouncements of Government policy, but—Heaven knows—these civil servants have waited long enough. They are entitled to an answer from the Government even now, and I hope that the answer which they receive will be prompt and clear.

6.49 p.m.

Mr. Timothy Sainsbury: A Committee elsewhere in the building prevented me from hearing all this debate, and I apologise for my earlier absence.
I endorse what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) said with reference to the Fulton Report. It is my experience that where one is employing scientists in an organisation along with administrators and others, it is essential, if those scientists are to be satisfactorily integrated in the total organisation, that they be on a proper basis of comparison with their colleagues. The practical experience of industry is that this satisfactory integration can be achieved only if their salary scales and their terms and conditions of employment are treated similarly.
Scientists, of all people,, are rational men, and their reason must lead them to suppose that any further delays in this matter would be unreasonable.

6.50 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department (Mr. Kenneth Baker): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) on raising this important matter even at this late stage of this Parliament. He speaks not only with a deep constituency interest of the research establishments in his constituency but also as Chairman of the important Select Committee on Science and Technology, to which he has given considerable personal drive. It is fair to say that, although any member of any Government would say that he would not entirely agree with all the recommendations of its various reports, the Select Committee gives us a great deal to think about and acts, as a Select Committee should, as a goad to the executive.
There are not many Ministers fortunate enough to reply to an Adjournment debate in which nine hon. Members make speeches and in which two others make fairly lengthy interventions. I am glad that I have this opportunity to answer all the matters which have been raised.
The debate has focused attention on the very difficult situation of pay for Government scientists. It is a situation that no one could have foreseen, and it has caused acute problems for management as well as for individual scientists.
I regret these present difficulties as much as anyone. It is a situation which my hon. Friend referred to as "a melancholy position", and I agree with his epithet. We in the Civil Service Department recognise fully the importance of the work of Government scientists for future scientific and technological development. I assure the House that there is no prejudice in the Civil Service against scientists. The wicked administrators do not positively arrange pay research to their own advantage and to the disadvantage of scientists. In fact, we go out of our way to try to open up the career prospects for scientists in Government service. Very often scientists join the Government scientific service because they want to go on in a particular scientific discipline, but we try to ensure that there are plenty of opportunities for those who wish to switch into a more regular administrative rôle in the Civil Service.

Mr. Neave: If there is no prejudice among the administrators, are not the results extraordinary? There is a 25 per cent. gap between administrative and scientific grades.

Mr. Baker: I am about to seek to explain that situation. I agree readily that it is unsatisfactory, and I want to point some way forward.
It may be helpful if I outline the recent history of scientists' pay. I do not quarrel with the analysis of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short).
In January 1971 the scientists' last pay research review gave them increases of between 5 and 10 per cent., averaging roughly 7½ per cent. In 1972 they received increases of between 7 and 7½ per cent. under a general Civil Service pay settlement. In April 1973 they received an increase within the £1 plus 4 per cent. limit of stage 2 which was an average of a little over 6 per cent. As from 1st January of this year they will receive a stage 3 settlement of 7 per cent. and more at some lower levels.
The Government scientists have not been able to benefit from the provisions of the stage 3 code designed to deal with pay anomalies caused by the standstill. I recognise that this has put their pay behind that of their colleagues in other


grades who have benefited in this way, and I very much regret that. The reason for it is that scientists are not satisfied with the methods of pay research.
After the pay research exercise in January 1971 they felt, for reasons which were quite understandable and which were mainly concerned with differences in the scales of research and development in the public sector and in the private sector and differences in career and age structure, that it did not produce fair comparisons. They made that point to us in 1971. Therefore, they decided that they wished to seek an alternative method for determining their pay.
As a result of their decision, no pay research survey was mounted for the review due to them in January 1973. By the time of the pay standstill there were still no formally agreed means for determining their pay, and I regret that there is still none.
The pay of the rest of the Civil Service—the other 475,000 non-industrial civil servants—is determined by comparing the work that is done in government with work done outside government For the administrative grades and right down to messenger levels this produces comparisons which the grades, through their negotiating unions, have found satisfactory. It also provides a basis for determining the pay of some 80,000 professional and technical people in the Civil Service who are not scientists—architects, draughtsmen and so on.
The scientists maintained that using this basis of comparison, which is appropriate for so many different tasks and skills which are used in the Civil Service, was not appropriate for them. It was quite within their right to do so, of course. But there was this dispute about the basis for determining their pay which has taken them out of the anomaly exercise from which the rest of the Civil Service has benefited.
My hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon suggested that there had been unnecessary delay in solving this problem. He will know that a joint examination of the problem by the IPCS and the CSD was agreed in September 1971 after the pay negotiations on the scientists' last pay research review were completed. Further information about the employment of scientists was sought by joint visits to a

number of firms, and we tried hard to find a solution in joint discussion with the IPCS in the light of this. I regret that this was unsuccessful.
Then we considered whether the matter should be put to an independent committee whose decision would be accepted by both sides, but stage 1 of the incomes policy was announced before that committee could be established.
Some harsh words have been said about my Department's rôle in this. But it is fair to say that it takes two to make a dispute, and the Government believe that the pay of scientists should be determined by pay research in accordance with the general principles laid down by the Priestley Commission by comparing work inside government with work outside government.
The IPCS genuinely believes that pay research is inappropriate. In these circumstances, both sides have undertaken to refer their difference to the Pay Board, and we have both committed ourselves in advance to accept the outcome.
Various suggestions have been made by hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Astor), the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East and my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. David Mitchell) all suggested that there should be an interim pay award—in other words, that the increase should be granted to Government scientists—and to this end the IPCS has submitted a claim. This is being examined. But pay increases must be contained within the provisions of the stage 3 code. Agreement has already been reached for payment to the scientists of the 7 per cent. or £2·25 a week permitted under the code.
It has also been suggested that the Pay Board's Report on Relativities might hold the solution for a way out. The Government are considering the report and are in consultation with the CBI and the TUC about it. But the problem of scientists' pay seems, on the one hand, to be the basis of determining their method of pay and, on the other hand, internal pay differentials. I am advised that this possibly puts it outside the scope of the Report on Relativities. Nevertheless, when we have reached conclusions about the way ahead on the Relativities Reporft we shall be able to


see whether it has anything to offer in the scientists' case.
I now turn to the matter of the Pay Board. As I told the House, we made formal reference to the Pay Board in 1973 We have asked it to recommend the method and criteria for determining scientists' pay. This is the matter in dispute, as it were, between the two sides which have agreed to accept the Pay Board's recommendations.
The board, which is not committed to any particular timetable, has said that it hopes to be able to report by the end of March. Both my Department and the IPCS have urged upon the board the importance of reporting quickly. My Department is giving the board all the help that it can to ensure that all the necessary information on comparisons is to hand.
I appreciate how strongly scientists feel on the matter. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East, my hon. Friends the Member:, for Abingdon, Newbury, Oxford (Mr. Woodhouse), Salisbury (Mr. Michael Hamilton), Basing-toke, Hastings (Mr. Warren) and Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) have spoken about the representations that have been made to them. They have left a vivid impression on me how strongly their constituents who are affected feel about the matter. I will undertake to draw to the attention of the Pay Board tomorrow not only the debate but the strong feelings that have been expressed. I think that the board will then be able to appreciate more vividly than if the debate had not taken place the depth and breadth of feeling that there is in the scientific community regarding this matter.
I am afraid that the problem of scientists' pay is difficult I wish to make it clear that I am as anxious as anyone to see the problem resolved satisfactorily and as soon as may be. I will do all that lies in my power to facilitate the Pay Board's task. I want to seek a speedy and satisfactory solution to the problem.
As this is the last occasion on which I shall address the House whilst you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, are in the Chair, and as I understand you will be retiring at the end of this Parliament, I should like to say what a pleasure it has been to serve

under you as Deputy Speaker of this Parliament. I am sure that in saying that I am expressing the views of all my colleagues.

HOSPITAL SERVICES (PEMBROKESHIRE)

7.4 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: First, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to join my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service in wishing you every good fortune in your retirement and to express my appreciation and thanks for the patient way that you have so often presided over our affairs.
Secondly, I should like to express my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Welsh Office, who is a good friend of my constituency and always takes a close interest in the future of our hospitals. I realise that although he has come to listen and to speak tonight he is far from well. I express the hope that he will soon be restored to his normal robust good health.
I speak with a particular feeling of appreciation and gratitude for the country's medical services at a time when my wife has only recently left the intensive therapy unit of a London hospital following a serious post-operative setback. I am particularly glad to have this opportunity of expressing my gratitude for, and to say I can only wish for my constituents, the devotion and skill that I found in the last few days at the West Middlesex Hospital and earlier at University College Hospital.
On 13th July 1970 in my maiden speech I spoke about the hospital service. I make no apology for returning to that theme in one of the last debates of this Parliament.
There comes a time in any long-continuing drama when it is worth while stopping for a moment to review what has happened, to identify what still needs to be done, and to decide on the priorities for the future. It is particularly appropriate that we should do so at this time when a new area health authority will shortly be taking over responsibility for the affairs of the hospital service in my part of the country. This drama may be said to have begun in 1962 with the publication of the Hospital Plan for England and Wales, which envisaged the enlargement


of the Pembroke County War Memorial Hospital in two stages.
Local pressure led to a modification of the plan, and in 1964 it was decided to build a new hospital at Wythybush "supportive"—that is the word that was used—to Carmarthen at a cost of £1½ million.
In 1968 the Chairman of the Welsh Hospital Board announced that a 314-bed hospital would be built at Wythybush at a cost of £3·15 million.
There were strong criticisms of the plan, and from the autumn of 1969 pressure mounted for a better hospital. This campaign, stimulated by strong complaints from some local doctors and consultants, received the widest possible support in the county.
On 17th October 1970, following my election as Member of Parliament, I led a deputation to see the Secretary of State, who then arranged for Dr. Bevan, the Chief Medical Officer, Welsh Office, to hold an inquiry. His report, also signed by Dr. Lovett, which was published in December of the same year, stated:
It is abundantly clear that the people of Pembrokeshire are dissatisfied with the existing hospital service. They believe that they are vulnerable in that emergencies cannot be treated expeditiously.
The problem is to provide for the people of Pembrokeshire a hospital service which will restore public confidence and which is compatible with the limited resources of skilled manpower and finance which are likely to become available, in the foreseeable future, for the hospital services in Wales.
The report went some way to alleviate public anxiety, but criticism has been maintained on a number of points—notably on the practicability and effectiveness of the accident unit that Dr. Bevan proposed and on the recommendation that the paediatric service should be centred on Carmarthen.
On the general history I would make three points. The first is that the public probably underestimate the very real difficulties of providing the complete service which, in an ideal world, we would like to see and also the considerable progress that has been made over the last three years.
The second point is that progress has, at least in part, been dragged from the Welsh Hospital Board stage by stage

painfully, and not always willingly, by unremitting public pressure.
The third point—I think I may just be entitled to make it in passing—is that, apart perhaps from the doctors in Pembrokeshire, no one has been more deeply involved in the fight for improved services than I have.
It is only fair to say that the problems are real and not always acknowledged by doctors, let alone by the general public. While it is easy to demand a fully comprehensive hospital service, and while it is natural to demand for the sick parity of treatment, the practical difficulties of making such provisions for a widely scattered population are great. There simply are not the resources or the doctors to make it possible to have full in-patient departments in all specialities. Some compromises are inevitable.
I also freely acknowledge, and wish to put on the record, the great progress that has and is being made. The foundations of a new and large hospital have been laid; a new unit for the mentally ill is under construction in Pembroke Dock. When Dr. Bevan reported, there was one ENT consultant for the whole area; now there are two. There was only one paediatrician based at Carmarthen; now there are three—one at Carmarthen, one at Aberystwyth and one working partly in Haverfordwest and partly in Carmarthen. The accident unit has been strengthened and the ambulance service improved. Beds are to be provided at the new hospital for long-stay patients. I believe that over £400,000 has been spent in modernising the existing hospitals. This and other improvements I acknowledge and welcome. Those who seek to belittle the general high standard of medical care in the area perform no service to anybody.
I turn to the recommendations contained in the Bevan Report. Some, we are told, have been implemented. We have, as my hon. Friend informed me in a letter of 27th October 1972, integrated planning. Our hospital is to be called a district general hospital, and Carmarthen is to be regarded as a centre for West Wales when only one such centre can be justified. The new hospital at Wythybush is to have in-patient departments in certain specialities.
Every effort is being made, or so the Minister assures me, to provide accommodation near their homes for long-stay patients. I imagine that that statement is justified by the long-stay beds to which I have already referred. The severely injured are now being taken to the Haverfordwest Hospital which is the nearer hospital. ENT operations are being concentrated at Carmarthen. The ambulance service is being strengthened. These are recommendations—or the most important of them—that the Minister can claim the board has done something about.
What about the others? There was the suggestion that GPs should be encouraged to work in hospitals and to be given permanent hospital appointments. On 27th July 1972 my hon. Friend wrote to me that the recommendation that GPs
should be encouraged to work in hospitals by being given permanent hospital appointments has been accepted in principle by all concerned, but there have been difficulties of implementation. I understand that the general practitioners have little available time to devote to additional hospital appointments but several additional doctors have recently started practising in the area and the Board is continuing its efforts to arrange implementation of the proposals.
That was a year ago. Can the Minister tell me how much progress has been made? From conversations in the hospital I understand that my initial scepticism has proved unfounded and that some GPs have become available. If that is indeed so I am delighted to have been proved wrong.
There were two major recommendations made by Bevan for action in a rather longer time scale: first, that a psychiatric department should form part of the Haverfordwest Hospital with beds for mentally ill patients under psychiatric care; and second, that there should also be a geriatric assessment unit and the appointment of a geriatrician for the area.
No provision has been made in the plans for the new hospital or in the board's capital programme for these departments. But one of the first tasks of the new area health authority will be to decide on the future use of the War Memorial Hospital, which is in good condition and will be available for a fresh rôle on the completion of the new hospital at Wythybush. My own proposal is that

it should be modernised and re-equipped for use as the new geriatric unit.
On 6th February 1973 my hon. Friend wrote to me a letter saying that the Welsh Hospital Board was in the process of preparing a consultative document on the hospital services in Pemrokeshire. He said:
The booklet being prepared will give the facts about the existing hospitals and asks for comments in the light of the new provision being made at Wythybush. All interested authorities and organisations will be fully consulted including, of course, the County Council who, along with anyone else, will be able to make their views known to the board.
I must tell my hon. Friend that I have heard nothing more about that so-called consultation, nor, I understand, has the medical staff at the hospital. How is it getting on?
I turn now to the accident and emergency services—the main cause of public anxiety in 1969 and 1970. Three months ago I would have said that we had not advanced far since then and that the people of Pembrokeshire delude themselves if they imagine that they have a properly organised accident and emergency unit.
Again, although the reservations remain, it is fair to say that our initial scepticism has turned out to be unjustified. One of the leading critics told me this week "We have to admit it is working pretty well within the limits of the type of unit". Bevan did not set out to create a full-scale accident unit, but rather a unit staffed to meet the needs of an exceptional area. His original proposals were strengthened when it was decided that an additional casualty officer should be of consultant status. The new consultant was not given an easy task, but it is encouraging to hear these favourable comments from those who have been most pessimistic. The new unit has the services of an additional anaesthetist, recommended by the Bevan report, and also an additional doctor. I am told that there is admirable co-operation with the consultant orthopaedic surgeon.
The major cause of anxiety now in this direction is about the facilities that will be available for the unit in the new hospital. They are not what one would expect for it because the hospital was


not designed to contain a separate accident unit. Here is a major problem for three years hence. The sooner the new area health authority faces up to it the better. It will have to keep the development of the unit under close review.
I turn finally to the problem of the paediatric service. I am particularly pleased that at this point my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has joined us. I welcome the fact that the new consultant is living near Haverfordwest. We in Pembrokeshire are fortunate to have found someone so patient. I understand that he wanted to live in Haverfordwest from the start. He was told by the board that he must live within 10 miles of Carmarthen. There was an outcry, and the board changed its mind. By that time the consultant had nearly completed the purchase of a house in Carmarthen. Fortunately for the board the consultant was able to withdraw from the contract and acquire a house at Narberth. We are all deeply indebted to him. He is now, I am glad to say, spending as much time as one could possibly want at Haverfordwest, according to one of the leading consultants in the county and one of the strongest critics of the original proposals.
There are at present 24 beds for children at Haverfordwest. The new hospital at Wythybush will have only 10 beds, and it is easy to understand the bewilderment and the anger of the public confronted by this drastic reduction of the existing service. Originally we were told that 10 beds were used only for surgical cases and that all medical cases would go on to Carmarthen. But in his letter to me of 14th June 1973 my hon. Friend informed me that these would be for general use for children and that it would be for the paediatrician and the other consultants concerned to make the best use of them. The consultant, I am told, is at present making such good use of the 24 beds that they are now more intensively used than ever before and have in recent weeks been fully occupied. Why on earth should that situation change because we get a new hospital? If they are needed now, surely they will be needed in three years' time.
The solution which has now been adopted for paediatric care is substantially that recommended by Professor

Peter Grey in the special report commissioned by the Welsh Hospital Board. In that report, which made out an unanswerable case for strengthening the paediatric service in Pembrokeshire, he said:
This arrangement will necessitate the provision of some extra beds for medical paediatrics at Haverfordwest.
So it is not just a lot of cranks who are demanding this but the board's own adviser.
There should be no difficulty in enlarging the children's ward at the new Withybush Hospital as the plans indicate that it occupies only half the area which could be used. In his letter of 14th June 1973 my hon. Friend said:
The number of beds was decided on some time ago and the position now is that the Welsh Hospital Board propose to undertake a reassessment of the whole provision of children's beds in South Wales because of the Stacey Report and also because the scale of provision for children's beds which was used at the time Withybush was planned has now been revised and is more generous.
That sounds to me like an admission of inadequacy which, coupled with our experience following the appointment of the new consultant, provides an unanswerable case.
We have made a great deal of progress in the last three years. We are now so close to a hospital service for the area which meets our reasonable objectives that it would be tragic if we could not take the final steps to complete the work that we have begun. With a dozen more beds for children, a firm plan for the establishment of psychiatric and geriatric units within a reasonable period, the provision of the proper facilities in the new hospital for the accident unit and, in due course—I put it no higher than that—appointment of the extra consultants in obstetrics and gynaecology recommended in the Bevan report, the hospital service in Pembrokeshire, for so long the subject of anxiety and criticism, would deserve the pride, respect and confidence of everyone.

7.23 p.m.

The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. David Gibson-Watt): Before I start, might I say that there is an insufferable draught on the Front Bench? If it were possible, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to improve that situation, it would greatly help someone like myself who is just recovering from a dose of double pneumonia. I know


that there are some people in the House who have the job of stopping the draught upon the Front Bench. I will only say that it has been greatly improved——

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Gibson-Watt: The draught has been greatly diminished since my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has come in. That means that there are people on the Front Bench to keep it away.
I welcome this opportunity to answer my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Nicholas Edwards) on the subject of hospitals in Pembrokeshire. The fact that my right hon. and learned Friend has joined me on the Front Bench to hear what is perhaps the last speech from a Welsh Minister in the present Session shows that he, like myself, attaches the greatest importance to the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Wales for health and hospitals in the Principality.
My hon. Friend probably knows more than any other Member of Parliament about hospital and health problems. I know that he has studied these problems not merely in Pembrokeshire but in the whole country for a very long time, as his speech tonight has shown. He has spoken of the basic difficulties. I think we would all agree that wherever we live, in town or country, we want medical services of every sort to be as readily accessible as possible. If we live in the country we still need as high a standard of service as in the town, though we may expect to have to travel rather further to get it.
Unhappily, no country has the resources of money and, in particular, skilled medical, scientific and nursing manpower to bring every specialist service as close to everyone as we would like. That is so in Wales and in Britain as a whole. This has certainly posed particular problems for the Welsh Hospital Board. But we can and should recognise, and we have recognised, that in the special circumstances of West Wales something more than the average share of resources, something more flexible than the normal pattern, is justified. From this stemmed the decision to provide acute hospital services in the main hospitals at Carmarthen, Aberystwyth and Haverfordwest rather

than in one single, more economical but less accessible major centre. A degree of interdependence between the three hospitals is essential because of the small-ness of the populations concerned and the need for 24-hour cover.
But this area will be the first in Wales to have all its major acute services in modern buildings. The new hospital of 324 beds now being built at Withybush will provide, within Pembrokeshire itself, services of very high quality over a wide range of specialties. I am glad to be able to tell my hon. Friend that work at Withybush does not have to be slowed down by reason of the general reduction in capital expenditure. Given the availability of steel and building supplies, I hope that it will open as planned in 1977.
My hon. Friend has referred to the progress made in implementing the recommendations of the report by the Chief Medical Officer at the Welsh Office, Dr. Bevan. He has spoken particularly about the additional appointments in paediatrics, ENT and accident and emergencies which have substantially improved the service available to the people of Pembrokeshire and of West Wales as a whole. My hon. Friend acknowledged this improvement.
Other consultant appointments have been made or are pending following approval. Over a wide range of important specialties the West Wales area as a whole will have significantly better cover in relation to population than the average area in Wales—or in England for that matter—and Pembrokeshire will benefit considerably from this. Of course we must look in the longer term to still further improvement here and in the country generally but this can only come with the gradual success of our long-term plans to expand the consultant manpower.
I turn now to those recommendations in the Bevan Report which have not yet been capable of implementation. First is the encouragement of general practitioners to work in hospitals. My hon. Friend will remember that Dr. Bevan acknowledged that there would be difficulties. There have been discussions over a long period between the Health Departments and the medical profession in which considerable progress has been


made. These discussions are continuing. The matter is complex but all concerned recognise its immediate importance and the opportunity for the real and close integration of general practitioner and hospital services which is a basic objective of the reorganisation of the National Health Service. I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall persist in our efforts towards a solution.
Secondly, my hon. Friend wanted a psychiatric department to be established in Haverfordwest. The hospital board has had the need for such a unit in mind for the future but it has not yet found a place, against other competing priorities, in its forward programme. The new Dyfed area health authority will no doubt keep this prospect in mind for the time when resources permit further developments at Withybush. The buildings there have been deliberately located to allow for further long-term expansion. In the meantime there will, of course, be psychiatric out-patient services.
Next I come to the question of a geriatric assessment unit at Haverfordwest and the related appointment of a further geriatrician based at Haverfordwest, which Dr. Bevan recommended "when it became practicable". Here, too, I am afraid we must accept that with the particularly severe shortage of geriatricians it is bound to take time.
In Wales as a whole, excluding the teaching hospital, a geriatrician now looks after, on average, one and a half times the population served by the geriatrician at Carmarthen. The Dyfed area health authority will, I am sure, put forward its own case as the availability of consultants gradually improves.
My hon. Friend mentioned the future rôle which the War Memorial Hospital, Haverfordwest, might play. The Dyfed area health authority, whose responsibility it will be to plan the reorganisation of services in the area after the opening at Withybush, will no doubt bear his suggestion in mind. It will, of course, consult locally before making firm proposals. But I think it right to say that it will wish to consider whether it might not be best to associate such departments with the major new hospital at Withybush, where there will be 84 geriatric beds.
As regards the development of the accident and emergency service at Haverfordwest, I know that there are some who have reservations. But my hon. Friend will understand that we have made a new type of consultant appointment—the only one in Wales—to meet the special circumstances in a hospital which does not itself provide the range of specialties to enable any and every accident case to receive full treatment there.
We are providing a short-term treatment unit where, in addition to dealing with relatively minor casualties—always, happily, the majority—the consultant will give skilled, advanced life-saving treatment for major accidents and emergency cases before referring them, when necessary, to appropriate specialist colleagues. He will have the full-time assistance of an experienced and senior doctor, and the AHA will no doubt endeavour to secure the help of general practitioners and further support from junior hospital doctors.
There will be the normal facilities of a casualty unit, including a treatment room. The consultant will be able to use the operating facilities of the hospital and will have the use of eight beds for short-term treatment; in the new hospital he will have the use of day surgery theatres and day beds. He will, of course, always be able to seek the assistance of his consultant colleagues. I am sure that the AHA will keep this matter under review.
Lastly, my hon. Friend asked me to reconsider the provision of children's beds at Withybush. The building has been designed to contain a 10-bed children's ward. It would be for the AHA in due course to demonstrate the need for additional provision; but I am bound to say that the average occupancy of the existing beds is only about 50 per cent. and on this basis the new provision seems about right.

Mr. Nicholas Edwards: How recently were those figures collected? My information is that since the appointment of the new consultant and his arrival in the area the occupancy rate has risen very substantially. I think we shall find that one of the results of having a new consultant working in the hospital and living close by will be that we shall have


a much greater demand and use for these beds.

Mr. Gibson-Watt: My hon. Friend may well be right. He has a far closer knowledge of this matter than I. I shall certainly look at the source of my information. If my hon. Friend is right, this again is a matter which the area health authority in the future must surely look at.
The main base for paediatric services for West Wales is at Carmarthen, and this seems to be sensible. Withybush will provide facilities for acute surgery. The paediatrician will cover the obstetric unit in the hospital and home visits. There will be out-patient facilities for children; and children's accident and emergency cases, which at present use some of the existing beds in the War Memorial Hospital, will have the use of beds in the day wards at Withybush.
In the last three years, as my hon. Friend has generously said, hospital services have greatly improved in Pembrokeshire and West Wales. My hon. Friend has shown an informed and dedicated encouragement of this. He has certainly never let me forget the hospital needs of Pembrokeshire. Within the constraints which the Welsh Hospital Board has had to live with, it has done its very best for this area. I pay tribute, as has my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State on more than one occasion, to what it has done.
From 1st April the new Dyfed AHA will have, through the new community health councils, the advantage of intimate knowledge of the needs and wishes of the local people. I am sure that the basic aims of National Health Service reorganisation—the progressive integration of all arms of the service and greater local responsibility—will be achieved and that the service will continue to improve.
For the last three and a half years it has been my responsibility to look after health and hospital affairs in Wales. I have been the Minister most intimately concerned with the National Health Service reorganisation. While naturally my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has ultimate responsibility, I wish to pay tribute to the fact that he has given me a very free hand in

this matter and I am very grateful for that.
I have learned a great deal. I have met many doctors, consultants, nurses, ancillary helpers and boilermen—all those who make up the human fabric which sustains the health of the Welsh people. I have visited many hospitals. I have addressed many meetings and conferences. I have listened to many delegations. I have learned a great deal. I am aware of the gaps in my knowledge. But I know that the men and women who man the health service in Wales do a great job, and they deserve great credit. I pay tribute to those who have been members of the Welsh Hospital Board, those who have worked in the hospitals and those who are now joining them from the local authorities and last, but certainly not least, those who have worked in the Welsh Office, which is responsible.
It is for that reason, and not just because I have answered this debate, that I repeat the expression of my great pleasure in being able to pay this tribute to the hospital service in Wales.

FUEL SUPPLIES (ELDERLY PERSONS)

7.46 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North) rose——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): I should like first to address a remark to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis). I believe that he wishes to raise the problems of fuel supplies to the aged, the sick and the infirm during a possible strike of miners. Will the hon. Gentleman tell me whether he has given adequate notice to a Minister to be present to answer the debate?

Mr. Lewis: Yes, Mr. Deputy Speaker. That was one of the points which I was about to mention to the House. I have been trying for the last half-hour to get through to the Department of Energy to find a Minister. About a quarter of an hour ago I got a message through to the Department. One point of complaint that I make is that Members of Parliament are kept waiting for half an hour to get a 'phone call through to ask a Minister to come to the House to listen to and to


answer an urgent debate. You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will agree that these are strange and unusual circumstances, as you said earlier. None of us, not even the Chair or myself, knew until literally a few moments ago what the business would be, how it would proceed, and when and whether the opportunity would be presented to have an Adjournment debate. Nevertheless, I eventually managed to leave a message for the Minister for him to be present this evening. Like yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am somewhat upset that he is not here, but perhaps I may make a few introductory remarks in the hope that a Minister will appear in due course.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before the hon. Member continues I should say that there is a ruling from the Chair that adequate notice should be given, and that adequate notice would be something in the nature of two to three hours, in order to get a Minister here. Ministers are not necessarily waiting to be called to an Adjournment debate.
I must therefore say certain things to the hon. Member about this. It is the custom of the Chair when this question arises to deprecate very strongly any hon. Member seeking to raise a matter upon the Adjournment which to be realistic needs a reply from a Minister of the Crown.
I must refresh the hon. Member's memory of the ruling of Mr. Speaker Hylton-Foster in 1964. An hon. Member sought to raise a matter on the Adjournment in view of the fact that no hon. Member had claimed the Adjournment debate, which is more or less the circumstances in which the hon. Member finds himself, no one else having claimed the Adjournment.

Mr. Lewis: That is not so.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The situation was as follows:
Mr. Speaker: I will explain the difficulty. My predecessors and I have always deprecated the introduction of subjects in an Adjournment debate unless due notice has been given to the Minister concerned. The reason is, really, that, apart from the House of Commons point of view an ex parte statement without reply is not a very valuable parliamentary proceeding. The hon. Member is in order in raising this matter. I cannot prohibit him from doing so, but I deprecate the practice

unless notice has been given to the Minister."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th February 1964; Vol. 689, c. 799.]
All I have to say to the hon. Member is that I must follow the custom of the Chair and I must advise him of the past practice of the House. He should heed what the Chair advises on these things, and I hope that, that being so, the hon. Member will not seek to raise the matter. However, if he seeks to raise it he is in order but it is something of an abuse of the rules in the light of Mr. Speaker Hylton-Foster's ruling.

Mr. Lewis: I agree with you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there is nothing out of order. The Chair may deprecate such a situation. Your references to Mr. Speaker Hylton-Foster's ruling applied quite rightly where an Adjournment debate had not been taken up. With respect, two Adjournment debates have been held this evening, and I tried to give the Minister notice much earlier. The Chair may deprecate such behaviour, but I strongly deprecate that the Government have changed the business and have so rearranged the order of business that I would have been unable to give notice earlier. It is not my job to be at the Ministry of Energy to ensure that someone is there with responsibility for answering debates.
This is one of the complaints I wish to make. The Secretary of State for Energy is in another place, quite wrongly in my view. He has no conception of the problems of the ordinary people of this country. If Lord Carrington had sat in this House he could have been here to answer my debate. He has two deputy Ministers, neither of whom is here this evening. I intend to go on making general remarks in the hope that by the time I reach the gravamen of my complaint one or other of the junior Ministers will be present. While the Whips are talking I shall keep quiet. I see that the Whips are doing their job.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member may continue.

Mr. Lewis: I was speaking to you personally, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I do not like the Whips interfering with my freedom.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member must realise that his freedom has been


very well catered for and that the Minister will be here shortly.

Mr. Lewis: I shall try to speak a little to use up the time by making a few remarks to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I understand that you are not standing again and I shall, therefore, not have the pleasure of confronting and discussing with you on occasions as I have done in the past. That is rather a pity, but I hope that you have a long and happy retirement in any other place you might arrive in.
I see that the Minister has arrived, which substantiates the point I made, which was that I had given the Minister notice, although, I agree, not very long notice and I apologise for that. I am sorry if I have dragged the Minister away from some other function which he considers more important and enjoyable than being here. I am sorry that I did not give him longer notice, but I can assure him that I took no part in rearranging Government business today. I took no part in calling a General Election or in telling the Government to run away from their term of office. It is purely fortuitous that there was a collapse of business and an opportunity arose of raising this matter on the Adjournment.
I had difficulty in contacting the Minister, just as I had difficulty in contacting his colleague a short while ago. On that occasion his right hon. Friend wrote to me and explained the difficulty, which was that the Department was very busy and there were only a limited number of lines on which to telephone. That is the first part of my complaint. There is a fuel crisis, yet it is impossible to telephone the Ministry. It is worse than trying to get through to Ladbroke's or William Hill's. If a Member of Parliament is kept waiting for half an hour to get through to a Minister, what chance have ordinary members of the public—and it is the ordinary members of the public who pay the Ministers' salaries?
When the Minister of State, Welsh Office, began to speak he commented that there was no one on the Labour benches. When I rose to speak there was no one on the Tory benches. There was no one on the Front Bench.

Mr. Cecil Parkinson: There was.

Mr. Lewis: Yes, the exception was one of the Whips, who is also paid by the taxpayer. When the Minister of State made that comment I asked him to give way, but he would not.
There should be a system by which ordinary members of the public, and certainly Members of Parliament, can make their complaints.
I want to raise the subject of energy supply problems confronting the aged, the sick and the disabled, which may well become worse in the weeks to come if—God forbid—there is a miners' strike. I hope that it does not happen, but, if it does, I am all right, Jack. I have a great deal of weight to keep me warm. The Minister and the Prime Minister are all right. You are all right, Mr. Deputy Speaker. But hundreds of thousands of old-age pensioners, the sick, the disabled and the infirm will not be able to obtain heat to keep themselves warm or cook their meals, and they will be without light.
I raised the matter when there was the original problem over paraffin. I represent a working-class constituency with many old-age pensioners, large numbers of whom cannot afford the ordinary methods of heating and cooking. They have had to turn reluctantly to the oil heater. The price of their paraffin has risen to fantastic heights. The controlled price is now 21p a gallon, which is nearly 4s. 2½d, and there is a black market. The cost is bad enough, but the old-age pensioners also have the problem of trapesing around trying to find paraffin. They have to go to one garage after another and to distributors.
The week before Christmas I asked the Minister to initiate a scheme whereby local authorities could supply paraffin to old-age pensioners, perhaps even delivering it to the door through their social security departments. Such supplies could have been subsidised. I see no reason why the Government, who give out largesse to the wealthier sections of the population, could not allow every local authority so many gallons of paraffin at, say, 10p a gallon, making up the difference with an Exchequer grant. Pensioners and others in need could then be allowed so many gallons a week on production of their pension book or other


documentary evidence. The amount involved would be only a couple of gallons each at the most. Nothing has been done, although the Minister eased the supply problem to some extent by making the price prohibitive.
The situation will become worse. I hope to God that the strike does not take place, but if it does the "Switch off Something Now" slogan will be found to be a lot of drivel. We are told to switch off a bar of an electric fire. The old-age pensioners cannot afford a bar. I do not know where the Minister lives. He should come to my constituency. The poor old devils there are living in one room with one little light. Many do not have television. They have a stove on which they cook and which keeps them warm. Some are more fortunate as they have electric heating, but we are told that we shall all suffer power cuts if the strike takes place. As I have said, I can suffer, or I can go out, as the Minister can. But the old-age pensioners cannot. Has the Minister done anything to see that they have supplies?
Because they cannot afford central heating, some of the old-age pensioners still have open grates. They buy paper bags of coal, for which they pay about two or three times the regular price, because selling coal in that way is a racket. A bag probably has to last them a week, and it barely keeps them warm. If there is a strike, where will they obtain their paper bag of coal?
The Minister has known that these problems were liable to occur. Has he set up a co-ordinating committee to see that such people are supplied? If not, why not? I have read and heard on the radio that the miners have said that they will do their best to see that hospitals, essential services and the like get their coal. The Minister should set up a joint committee with the National Union of Mine-workers to ensure that coal supplies are sent to borough councils which could set up yards from which local authority workers could make supplies available, perhaps even delivering them to those in need.
I am not suggesting that such supplies should be limited to old-age pensioners. They should also go to the disabled, the sick, the blind and so on, who will find it very difficult to manage.
The Minister may say that he hopes that the strike will not occur and that, therefore, there will be no necessity for what I suggest. I hope he is right, but that does not mean that he should not at least establish a "National Distribution of Energy Committee"—[Interruption.] The Minister is taking orders from the Whips. The power of the Whips in the House is terrific. There should be a national committee on which the Minister and the NUM would be represented. There should also be area committees with representatives of area branches of the NUM and local authority representatives. They should draw up a list of those in need.
That should have been done weeks ago, when I first raised the matter in December. The committees could then tell the local welfare officers or dustmen, if the strike occurs, "Take a sack of coal or a gallon of paraffin to Mr. Smith and Mrs. Brown, or tell them that they can pick them up at the council depot." The mine workers could be told "We need so many tons of coal". I understand that nothing has been done by the Department to get anything like that machinery set up. I am amazed about that.
I said earlier that we could argue about who is responsible for the energy crisis. The Government are saying that they have tried to enforce a fair prices and incomes policy to control inflation and that they will not go outside the terms of their counter-inflation policy. They say that the crisis is the responsibility of others. If the Government's policy has been working, God knows what would have happened if we had not had it. It is fantastic that it should be called a counter-inflation policy.
I see the poor in my constituency. The poorer they are, the more vicious and the more wicked are the attacks upon their limited income. There has been vicious action against the nurses, the dustmen and the road sweepers, and now the miners. They must not get more than £20 or £25 a week. The Government say that that would be inflationary. But a company director under phases 1, 2 and 3 can each year put up his salary by thousands of pounds. I have sent details of dozens of examples to every Minister, including the Prime Minister, and I have


asked for action to be taken. No action has been taken.
Only last Friday it was reported in the Press and confirmed that a director of a building company had increased his salary by £300 a week. That represented a salary increase of 172 per cent.

Mr. Ronald Brown: Is my hon. Friend aware that the present Secretary of State for the Home Department has made it clear that he regards as the hallmark of freedom the right of every individual to negotiate his own wages without interference by the Government? It seems that to allow the company director to increase his salary by £300 a week is in accord with Government policy.

Mr. Lewis: My hon. Friend is right. I do not know when the Secretary of State for the Home Department made that statement, but during the last election it was said by the present Home Secretary, the Prime Minister and many other Ministers that in no circumstances would they have a statutory prices and incomes policy. They said that it would be inflationary. They claimed that it would cause industrial unrest and damage the economy. Now that there is another election, we shall have to remind them of that.
My hon. Friend is right when he says that the company director is entitled to negotiate a £300 a week increase on top of his salary of about £10,000 a year. Of course, that is only one example. I can quote dozens of examples. Such increases have been certified by chartered accountants, public auditors and by company directors themselves.
The week before last, the chairman of a well-known brewery increased his salary by £2,650 a year. He did so on the very day that he announced a profit increase for his company of about 45 per cent. Believe it or believe it not, on the very same day the Price Commission allowed the company to increase the price of its beer
This is what happens under the Government who are alleged to be attacking inflation, who say that they will not allow a miner to have a few extra pounds a week because to do so would be inflationary. They are prepared to allow

a company director to increase his salary but they do not allow the nurses, the hospital workers and the teachers, for example, a few extra pounds a week. These are the people who are assets to the country.
The director to whom I have referred builds houses. He has given himself an extra £300 a week. To whom is that money passed on? I am sure that the Government do not pay him his £300 a week. The answer is that it is passed on by increasing the price of the end product—the houses. The young couple who cannot get a house for £10,000 or £15,000 want to remember that one of the reasons which stops them buying a house is that company directors have been encouraged by the Government to increase their salaries by 172 per cent. in one year.
The Government can take action when they want to do so. They cancelled today's business and they introduced a Bill to allow hon. Members to claim extra election expenses. I am not against that. They also introduced the Pensions (Increase) Bill. But since last December nothing has been done to look after the possible discomfort of some of the poor devils who may lose their lives.
What will happen? The Government will blame everything on the miners. There should be a new song entitled "Every problem we are confronted with is due to the miners". It would be lovely if the Government could get away with it. But it is not all due to the miners. The Government had the power to govern and they should have used their power. They have done so only in the interests of rich surtax payers such as company directors. They have done nothing to look after the interests of the aged, the sick and the infirm. If they have done something, I shall be glad to know the details from the Minister. For instance, when was the regional committee set up? How does it operate? Where should the old people go to in my constituency to get coal and paraffin? Will coal and paraffin be subsidised? Those are the sort of matters to which the Government should have attended. If there is not a strike, no harm will have been done. To put into effect the suggestions which I have made might have cost a few thousand pounds. Surely it is worth that sort of


money although we all hope that it will not be necessary to use a regional committee.
The Government have wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds in other ways. I do not know how many millions they have wasted on the Channel Tunnel and on Concorde. The Government said that they would not nationalise Rolls-Royce and then they decided to do so. It would seem that the money does not really matter.

Mr. Ronald Brown: We all understand the point my hon. Friend is trying to make. The serious fact is that many of the people to whom he has referred will have their lives shortened by the Government action.

Mr. Lewis: I agree with my hon. Friend. It is all very well saying that if Ted and his merry boys are returned, all will be well in 1975 or 1976. Of course, a lot of old people will not be with us then. They will be up in another place. They will probably be warmer than they are now. They will not be able to judge whether Ted broke all his election promises and pledges. We shall have a chance to judge, along with the electors, but many old people will not be here.
I referred, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to the earlier occupant of the Chair, Sir Robert Grant-Ferris. I was given to understand that he would not be standing for election. I believe, Mr. Mallalieu, that you too will not be standing again. I am most sorry to hear that. I have had brushes with every occupant of the Chair but there have never been any hard feelings. We have had our squabbles but certainly on my part there have been no hard feelings. I shall let the House into a little secret: we have often had a drink afterwards and discussed what took place. I am sorry you are going. If you end up in another place, I hope you will be as happy and as effective there as you have been here.
I wish that another friend of ours could have been here—the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell). My hon. Friends do not know this, and I will let them into the secret. The right hon. Gentleman is not standing for re-election. Indeed, it is rumoured in the House that he has resigned

from the Conservative Party, but I do not know whether that is true. Good old Enoch. I am glad he is not standing, because I agree with what he said.
The right hon. Gentleman is not here, and I apologise to him if I get his words wrong, but I believe I am giving a correct paraphase when I say that he has said that he will not be party to a crooked election, that he is not going to be party to an election held to smash a miners' strike, a dishonest and crooked election. The right hon. Gentleman is not standing for re-election but I am sure that I shall be back and I am sure that we shall see him again, perhaps at a by-election. Meanwhile let the Government get on with the job of looking after the aged, the sick and the infirm.

8.12 p.m.

Mr. David Mudd: I was going to begin by apologising to the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis). Having heard the opening of his oration, I thought we were going to be treated to another lung-bursting marathon speech based on bogus arguments with a large degree of speciousness. I must admit, however, that I recognised the sincerity with which he has made an acceptable case, one which I hope the Government will not overlook. I congratulate the hon. Member also on a notable double achievement. In a speech of 20 minutes, he was told by two successive occupants of the Chair that they were resigning. To drive two worthy Deputy Speakers into premature retirement is an achievement even for the hon. Gentleman.
I took to heart the hon. Gentleman's point about the long delays experienced by constituents attempting to telephone the Department of Energy. It is a serious matter not only in terms of time and of the 2p pieces wasted, but even more serious, more embarrassing and more financially unacceptable when the people making such calls are in West Cornwall trying to contact a regional office in Bristol. Should the emergency continue, I hope that the Government will review the situation in an attempt at least to open avenues to the public at a cost they can afford to pay.
As the hon. Gentleman was speaking, I could not help reflecting on the tragic


irony of the present industrial situation. It seems the epitome of folly and the underlining of inhumanity that only a few months ago so many trade unionists took a day off work for a protest parade against the low level of old-age pensions, yet a group of trade unionists are now saying "Either we will deprive these old-age pensioners of fuel for their fires or we will win a settlement which will be so inflationary that the value of their pensions will be further eroded." The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways.
The hon. Gentleman launched his customary attack on the largesse of the Government to the wealthy. Under the present Government, however, 4 million working people have no tax liability whatever. A married man with two children earning £1,000 a year pays £51 a year less tax than he did under the Labour Government. A married man with two children earning £2,000 pays £107 less tax. Let the hon. Gentleman at least accept that largesse when bestowed by a Conservative Government is across the board and benefits the lower paid best.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: Mr. Arthur Lewis rose——

Mr. Mudd: I am not prepared to give way. I sat biting my tongue during the hon. Gentleman's speech and I am sure he will show me the same courtesy. He has made a very good case for the disabled and those in impoverished circumstances, and for all who need fuel. My only quarrel with him on this issue is that, in the dying moments of this Parliament, he makes his appeal to seek publicity and headlines when he should have been addressing his comments to his absent friends and inviting the attention of the trade union movement to the effects of the strike.

8.16 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Peter Emery): I add my own good wishes to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to your colleague, the right hon. Member for Nantwich (Sir R. Grant-Ferris) on this last day but one of the long and distinguished service that you have both given to the House. I am sure that I speak on behalf of the Government when I pay this tribute to you. You yourself came from the Opposition benches to your present position. I hope

you will permit me to pay this tribute to the excellent way you have performed your duties.
I want to put some aspects of the subject of this debate into perspective. I was informed at 7.20 p.m. that there was the possibility of a debate. I immediately left my other duties to come here. It was, indeed, purely by luck that a Minister of my Department was near enough to be able to be here within 15 minutes. Not very much notice was given.
The Government took immediate steps in December—contrary to suggestions made by the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Arthur Lewis)—to ensure that, where there was any lack of paraffin, supplies should be made available. We increased the allocation of paraffin by 20 per cent. over the previous period. Where there were difficulties in obtaining supplies, we made it clear that appeals could be made to the Oil Industry Emergency Committee, and these have been dealt with. At the same time, when we saw that there was the possibility of price rises, we imposed a maximum price on paraffin. This was done in the third week in December and has applied ever since.
I had investigations made only this week in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. We have no appeals at the moment from any authority wanting paraffin to be delivered into his constituency. That is not the impression one got from his speech. Let it be clear that retailers wanting paraffin delivered could appeal if they felt their supplies were not big enough, and that if that were so extra allocations would be made by the Oil Industry Emergency Committee.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: The hon. Gentleman said no complaint has been made, and I agree with him. But I made a complaint to him in the House on 18th December and improvements have been made since. He will recollect that Dr. Cilfton Hill, Chairman of the Newham Community Centre, wrote to him and to the Prime Minister. The hon. Gentleman answered. Complaints had been made but they were put right following that initiative. I went on to develop the other side of my argument by pointing out that nothing tangible had been done about the other things I was raising.

Mr. Emery: As usual, my words are being twisted. What I said was that at this moment there are no complaints.

Mr. Lewis: Oh, well!

Mr. Emery: This is what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting, that there are complaints. He wants action to be taken. It has been taken and the position rectified.
The hon. Member suggested that hon. Members had not been able to get through to the Department of Energy. Every hon. Member has received from me updated information about the regulations and all the facts dealing with the emergency. In that there is provided the telephone number of the duty room at the Department—825–1200. That room started with 20 telephone lines, they were increased to 40 and they have been further increased to 50.

Mr. Lewis: Good.

Mr. Emery: During this week, operating on a 24-hour basis, it has been

found that for most of the day there are over 30 lines vacant

Mr. Lewis: I am going to try the number now.

Mr. Emery: The total number of those who applied this week has been between 500 and 800 in any day. I hope that my Department keeps the hon. Gentleman on the telephone.

Mr. Lewis: I am back.

Mr. Emery: I was afraid that that might have brought the hon. Gentleman back.
Supplies of coal are a matter for the NCB and the coal traders, who are in consultation about this. The hon. Gentleman talks with crocodile tears about wanting to stop the strike but not once did he urge the miners not to strike. That is the way in which his constituents will be best served.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-two minutes past Eight o'clock.